Winter in Madrid

Chapter Twenty-One

THE PSYCHIATRIST was a tall thin man with spectacles and silver hair. He wore a grey pinstripe suit. Bernie hadn’t seen anyone wearing a suit for three and a half years, only the prisoners’ boiler suits and the functional guards’ uniforms, both a drab olive-green.

The doctor had been installed in the room under the comandante’s hut, behind a scratched table brought from the offices above. Bernie guessed he hadn’t been told what the room was used for. It was just like Aranda’s macabre sense of humour to put him here.

Agustín, one of the guards, had been waiting for Bernie when his work detail returned from the quarry, with orders to take him to the comandante. ‘It is nothing to worry about, not trouble,’ he whispered as they crossed the square. Bernie had nodded his thanks. Agustín was one of the better ones, an untidy young man who liked a quiet life. The sun was low and a cold wind blew down from the mountains. Bernie kept track of the days and knew this was the first of November; winter was almost here. The shepherds were starting to bring their flocks down from the high pastures. Working on the quarry detail was hard but at least you got some sense of the rhythms of the outside world. He shivered, envying Agustín the heavy poncho he wore over his uniform.

Comandante Aranda sat behind his desk. He stared up at Bernie with his hard eyes, a humorous expression on his long handsome face with its luxuriant black moustache.

‘Ah, Piper,’ he said. ‘I have a visitor for you.’

‘¿Señor?’ Bernie stood rigidly to attention, the way Aranda expected. A spasm of pain went through his arm; his old wound hurt after a day moving rocks.

‘Do you remember in San Pedro de Cardena, you were evaluated by a psychiatrist?’

‘Si, señor.’ It had been a bizarre interlude, a joke in hell. San Pedro was an abandoned medieval monastery outside Burgos. Thousands of Republican prisoners had been crammed in there after the Jarama battle. One day they had been given thick questionnaires to fill in. They were told it was for a project about the psychology of Marxist fanaticism. Two hundred questions, varying from his reaction to certain colours to his degree of patriotism.

The comandante lit a cigarette, studying him through a curling haze of smoke with his cold hazel eyes. Aranda had been in charge of the Tierra Muerte camp for nearly a year. He was a colonel, a veteran of the Civil War and before that the Foreign Legion. He enjoyed cruelty and even Bernie wouldn’t have dared be insolent with him. As always the comandante was immaculately dressed, his uniform ironed into knife-edge creases. The prisoners knew every line and curve of his handsome bronzed face with its waxed moustache. If he was frowning or wore his pouting childish look, someone could be in for a beating.

This evening, though, he looked amused. He blew smoke at Bernie; at once Bernie’s craving for tobacco returned and he found himself leaning forward slightly to catch another whiff.

‘They are doing a follow-up study, prisoners of special interest. Dr Lorenzo is waiting for you downstairs. And Piper, be sure to cooperate with him, ¿vale?’

‘Sí, señor comandante.’

Bernie’s heart was thumping as Agustín led him down to the basement room, opening the heavy wooden door. He had never been there but had heard the room graphically described.

The psychiatrist’s face was cold. ‘You may leave us,’ he told Agustín.

‘I shall be outside, señor.’

The psychiatrist waved a hand at a steel chair in front of the desk. ‘Sit down.’ Bernie slumped into it; he was very tired. An oil stove had been put in a corner and the room was hot. The psychiatrist ran a silver pen down the columns of a questionnaire. Bernie recognized his own writing. The lice in his beard stirred, roused by the heat.

The psychiatrist looked up. ‘You are Piper, Bernard, English, age thirty-one?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am Dr Lorenzo. Three years ago, when you were in San Pedro, you answered a questionnaire. You recall?

‘Yes, doctor.’

‘The purpose of the study was to determine the psychological factors that cause people to embrace Marxism.’ His voice was even, monotonous. ‘Most Marxists are ignorant working people of low intelligence and culture. We wish to look again at the people who did not match those criteria. You, for example.’ He studied Bernie keenly.

‘What brings people to Marxism is simple,’ Bernie said quietly. ‘Poverty and oppression.’

The psychiatrist nodded. ‘Yes, that is what I would expect you to say. And yet you can have been subject to none of those things; I see you attended an English public school.’

‘My parents were poor. I got a place at Rookwood under a scholarship.’ Bernie found his eyes straying to the corner of the room, where a tall object was covered by a tarpaulin. Lorenzo tapped the desk sharply with the silver pen.

‘Pay attention, please. Tell me about your parents – what did they do?’

‘They worked in a shop someone else owned.’

‘And you felt sorry for them perhaps? You were close to them?’

A picture of his mother came into Bernie’s head, standing in the parlour wringing her hands. ‘Bernie, Bernie, why do you have to go to this awful war?’ He shrugged.

‘They may be dead now for all I know. I’ve never been allowed to write.’

‘You would write if you could?’

‘Yes.’

Lorenzo made another note. ‘This school, this Rookwood, that would have brought you into contact with boys of a higher culture. It interests me that you rejected those values.’

Bernie laughed bitterly. ‘There was no culture there. And their class was the enemy of mine.’

‘Ah, yes, the Marxist metaphysic.’ The psychiatrist nodded reflectively. ‘Our studies show that when intelligent, privileged people are drawn to Marxism it is because of a character defect. They are unable to understand the higher values, like spirituality and patriotism. They are innately antisocial and aggressive. The comandante tells me, Piper, that you reject the camp’s rehabilitative efforts, for example?’

Bernie laughed quietly. ‘You mean the compulsory religious instruction?’

Lorenzo studied him as though he were a rat in a laboratory cage. ‘Yes, you would hate Christianity. A religion of love and reconciliation. Yes, that is quite clear.’

‘We get other lessons as well.’

Dr Lorenzo looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘This is the torture room. That cupboard behind you will be full of rubber truncheons and pails for mock drownings.’

Lorenzo shook his head gently. ‘Fantasies.’

‘Then take the tarpaulin off the thing behind you,’ Bernie said. ‘Go on.’ He realized his tone was becoming insolent and bit his lip. He did not want a complaint to Aranda.

The psychiatrist gave a little grunt of annoyance, then stood and lifted the tarpaulin. His face set as he saw the tall wooden stake with the metal seat, the restraining straps and neck collar, the heavy brass screw with its handles behind.

‘The garrote vil, doctor. They’ve had six executions since I’ve been here. They line us up in the yard, bring out the garrote and make us watch. You hear the man’s neck break, there’s a loud crack, like a shot.’

The psychiatrist sat down again. His voice was still calm. He looked steadily at Bernie, then shook his head. ‘You are an antisocial,’ he said quietly. ‘A psychopath.’ He shook his head. ‘Men such as you can never be rehabilitated; your minds are abnormal, incomplete. The garrote is needed, I am afraid, to keep those like you in check.’ He made a note on the questionnaire, then called out to Agustín. ‘Guard! I have finished with this man.’

Agustín led Bernie away. The sun had gone below the horizon and a red light bathed the wooden huts lining the earthen square. The searchlights in the watchtower above the barbed-wire fence would soon come on. Against the mess hut a large cross stood, six feet high, ropes hanging from the arms. It looked like a religious symbol, but it wasn’t: they hung men from the ropes as a punishment. Bernie wished he had mentioned that to the psychiatrist.

It was time for roll-call; three hundred prisoners were shambling into lines around the little wooden platform in the middle. Agustín halted, shifting his heavy rifle on his shoulder.

‘I have to fetch another five to the mad-doctor tonight,’ he said. ‘It will be a long evening.’

Bernie looked at him in surprise. The guards were not supposed to talk with the prisoners.

‘The doctor looked displeased,’ Agustín added.

Bernie looked at him, but the guard’s thin face was turned away. ‘Be careful,’ Agustín said quietly. ‘Better times may be ahead, Piper. I can say no more now. But be careful. Do not get punished now, or killed.’

BERNIE STOOD next to his friend Vicente. The lawyer’s thin face, surrounded by its shock of grey hair and matted beard, looked drawn and ill. He smiled at Bernie then coughed, a liquid gurgling sound deep in his chest. Vicente had been having chest infections since the summer; he seemed to recover but then they would hit him again, worse than before. Some of the guards let him do light work in return for helping them fill in forms, but this week the sergeant in charge of the quarry detail was Ramirez, a brutal man who had had Vicente sorting rocks all day. He looked as though he could hardly stand.

‘What happened to you?’ he whispered to Bernie.

‘They’ve got a psychiatrist here, he’s interviewing some of the people from San Pedro. He said I was an antisocial psychopath.’

Vicente smiled wryly. ‘Then that proves what I have always said, you are a good man even if you are a Bolshevik. If one of these people says you are normal, then is the time to worry. You’ve missed dinner.’

‘I’ll manage,’ Bernie said. He must be sure to get a good night’s sleep if he was to be fit to work tomorrow. The rice they fed the prisoners was awful, the sweepings of some Valencian storehouse mingled with gritty dust, but to be able to work you had to eat all you could.

He went over what Agustín had said. He didn’t understand. Better times? Was there some political change in Spain? The comandante had told them Franco had met Hitler and that soon Spain would be in the war, but they knew nothing of what was actually going on outside.

Aranda stepped out of his hut. He carried his riding crop, tapping it against his leg. This evening he was smiling and all the prisoners relaxed slightly. He vaulted on to the platform and began calling out names in his clear sharp voice.

The roll-call took half an hour, the men standing rigidly to attention. Towards the end someone a few rows away fell down. The man’s neighbours bent to help him.

‘Leave him!’ Aranda called out. ‘Eyes to the front.’

At the end the comandante raised his arm in the Fascist salute. ‘¡Arriba España!’ In the early days of Bernie’s captivity, at San Pedro, many prisoners had refused to respond, but when a few were shot they had complied, and now there was a dull ragged response. Bernie had told the other prisoners about an English word that sounded almost the same as ‘arriba’ and now it was ‘Grieve España’ that many called back.

The prisoners were dismissed. The man who had fallen was lifted by his neighbours and they carried him back to his hut. It was one of the Poles. He stirred faintly. On the other side of the barbed-wire fence a figure, shadowy in the dusk in his long black robe, stood watching.

‘Father Eduardo,’ Vicente muttered. ‘Come for his prey.’

They watched as the young priest came through the gate and walked towards the Pole’s hut, his long sotana stirring up little eddies of dust from the yard. The last of the light glinted on his spectacles. ‘Bastard,’ Vicente muttered. ‘Coming to see if he can terrify another good atheist into taking the last rites by threatening him with Hell.’

VICENTE WAS an old Left Republican, a member of Azaña’s party. He had been a lawyer in Madrid, providing cheap services to the city’s poor, until he joined the militia in 1936. It was a romantic gesture, he had told Bernie. ‘I was too old. But even rationalist Spaniards like me are romantics at heart.’ Like all his party Vicente had a visceral hatred for the Church. It was almost an obsession with the Left Republicans; a liberal-bourgeois distraction, the Communists said. Vicente despised the Communists and said they had destroyed the Republic. Establo, leader of the Communists in Bernie’s hut, disapproved of Vicente and Bernie’s friendship.

‘In this camp you have only your convictions to keep you going,’ Establo had warned Bernie once. ‘If they are eaten away your strength will go too, you will give up and die.’ Establo himself looked as though it was only his beliefs that kept him alive. He was in his forties but looked sixty; his skin yellow and sagging, scarred with the marks of scabies. His eyes, though, were still full of fire.

Bernie had shrugged and told Establo he would end by converting Vicente, that the lawyer had the seeds of a class perspective. He had no respect for Establo; he hadn’t voted for him when the twenty Communists in the hut elected their leader. Establo was obsessed with control and couldn’t bear disagreement. During the war it had been necessary to have such people but it was different here. By the end of the Civil War the parties that made up the Republic had all hated each other, but in the camp the prisoners needed to cooperate to survive. Establo, though, tried to maintain the Communists’ separate identity. He told them they were still the vanguard of the working class, that one day their time would come again.

A couple of days before, Pablo, one of the other Communists, had whispered in Bernie’s ear. ‘Beware of mixing with the lawyer, compadre. Establo is making an issue of it.’

‘He can go fuck himself. What’s his authority, anyway?’

‘Why court trouble, Bernardo? The lawyer will die soon, anyone can see that.’

THIRTY PRISONERS shuffled into their bare wooden hut and threw themselves down on the straw mattresses covering their plank beds, each with one brown army blanket. Bernie had taken the bunk next to Vicente when the last occupant died. It was partly an act of defiance against Establo, who lay on his bunk in the opposite row, staring across at him.

Vicente coughed again. His face reddened and he lay back, gasping.

‘I am bad. I will have to plead sickness tomorrow.’

‘You can’t. Ramirez is on duty, you’ll just get a beating.’

‘I don’t know if I can work another day.’

‘Come on, if you can stick it out until Molina is back, he’ll put you on easy duty.’

‘I will try.’

They were silent a moment, then Bernie leaned over on his elbow, speaking quietly. ‘Listen, the guard Agustín said an odd thing earlier.’

‘The quiet one from Sevilla?’

‘Yes.’ Bernie repeated the guard’s words. Vicente frowned.

‘What can it mean?’

‘I don’t know. What if the Monarchists have toppled the Falange? We wouldn’t know.’

‘We’d be no better off under the Monarchists.’ Vicente thought a moment. ‘Better times may be ahead? For who? He might have meant just for you, not all the camp.’

‘Why should they do me any favours?’

‘I don’t know.’ Vicente lay back with a sigh that turned into a cough. He looked ill, miserable.

‘Listen,’ Bernie said, to distract him. ‘I stood up to that bastard quack. He told me I was a degenerate because I couldn’t be converted to Catholicism. I remember that scene last Navidad. Remember, the doll?’

Vicente gave a sound between a laugh and a groan. ‘Who could forget it?’

IT HAD BEEN a cold day, snow on the ground. The prisoners were marched out into the yard where Father Jaime, the older of the two priests who served the camp, stood dressed in a green and yellow cope. In his regalia in the bare snowy yard he looked like a visitor from another world. Beside him young Father Eduardo, in his usual black, looked uncomfortable, his round face red with cold. Father Jaime was holding a child’s doll, a baby made of wood, wrapped in a shawl. There was a silver circle painted round its brow that puzzled Bernie for a moment until he realized it was meant to be a halo.

As always Father Jaime’s face was supercilious, angry, his hawklike nose with the stiff little hairs on top lifted as though offended by more than the men’s rank smell. Aranda called the prisoners into shivering lines then stood on the platform, tapping his crop against his leg.

‘Today is Epiphany,’ he called out, his breath making grey clouds in the freezing air. ‘Today we honour the baby Jesus, who came to Earth to save us. You will offer up homage and perhaps the Lord will take pity on you and shine a light into your souls. You will each kiss the image of the Christ child Father Jaime holds. Do not worry if the person before you has tuberculosis, the Lord will not allow you to be contaminated.’

Father Jaime frowned at the levity in the comandante’s tone. Father Eduardo looked at his feet. Father Jaime held the doll up, threateningly, like a weapon.

One by one the men shuffled past and kissed it. A few failed to bring their lips quite to the wood and the priest called them back sharply. ‘Again! Kiss the baby Jesus properly!’

It was one of the Anarchists who refused, Tomás the shipbuilder from Barcelona. He stood in front of the priest, looking him in the eyes. He was a big man and Father Jaime shrank back a little.

‘I will not kiss your symbol of superstition,’ he said. ‘I spit on it!’ And he did, leaving a trail of white spittle on the baby’s wooden brow. Father Jaime cried out as though the baby were real. One of the guards landed a blow on Tomás’s head that felled him to the ground. Father Eduardo looked about to step forward but a glare from Father Jaime stopped him. The older priest wiped the doll’s brow with a white handkerchief.

Aranda jumped off the platform and marched over to where the big man lay. ‘You insult Our Lord!’ he cried. ‘The Virgin in Heaven weeps as you spit on her child!’

The words were outraged but his tone was still mocking. Aranda took his crop and began methodically beating the Anarchist, starting with his legs and ending with a blow to Tomás’s head that drew blood. He called a couple of guards to carry him off, then turned to Father Jaime. The priest had shrunk back, clasping the doll to his breast as though sheltering it from the scene.

Aranda bowed. ‘I am sorry for that insult, sir. Please continue. We shall bring these men to religion if the effort kills us, shall we not?’ Aranda nodded to the next man in line. Bernie was pleased to see a little fear as well as anger in Father Jaime’s eyes as the prisoner shuffled forward and bent his head to the doll. No one else resisted.

‘I REMEMBER how that doll smelled,’ Bernie said to Vicente. ‘Paint and saliva.’

‘Those black beetles, they are all the same. Father Jaime is a brute, but that Eduardo is more cunning. He will be in the sick Pole’s hut now, sniffing out whether he is about to die, whether he is weak enough to be browbeaten into taking absolution.’

Bernie shook his head. ‘Eduardo’s not so bad. Remember he tried to get a doctor for the camp? And the crosses for the graveyard?’ He thought of the hillside, just outside the camp, where those who died were buried in unmarked graves. When Father Eduardo came in the summer he had asked for crosses to mark the dead. The comandante had forbidden it; those inside the camp had been sentenced to decades of imprisonment by military courts; in practice they were already dead. One day the camp would close and the huts and barbed wire would be removed, leaving no sign on the bare windswept hill that it had ever been there.

‘What do crosses matter?’ Vicente replied. ‘More symbols of superstition. Father Eduardo’s kindness is fake, it is all to an end. They’re all the same, the black beetles, they’ll try to get you when you’re dying, at your weakest.’

It was dark outside now. Some in the hut played cards or sewed their tattered uniforms by the light of weak tallow candles. Bernie closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He thought about Tomás’s beating; the Anarchist had died a few days later. He himself had trod on thin ice with the psychiatrist this afternoon. It was lucky the man seemed to see him only as a specimen. Part of Bernie wanted to make some fierce gesture like Tomás’s, but he wanted to live. If they killed him that would be their final, irrevocable victory.

Eventually he slept. He had a strange dream. He came into the hut with a whole crowd of schoolboys from Rookwood, led by Mr Taylor. The boys examined the wooden pallets then stood around the table made of old packing cases in the middle. They said if this was their new dorm it was jolly rough, they didn’t think much of it. ‘Don’t be downhearted,’ Taylor said reprovingly. ‘That’s not the Rookwood way.’

Bernie woke with a start. The hut was completely dark, he could see nothing. He was cold; he moved the thin blanket down to cover his feet. It was the first really cold night. September and October were the easiest months: the frying heat of summer fading by a few blessed degrees each week, the temperature at night comfortable enough to allow you to sleep easily. But now winter was here.

He lay awake in the darkness, listening to the coughs and mutterings of the other men. There were creaks as some tossed uneasily on their pallets, perhaps feeling the cold too. Before long there would be frosts each morning; by Christmas people would be dying.

There was a whisper from the next bunk. ‘Bernardo, are you awake?’ Vicente coughed again.

‘Yes.’

‘Listen,’ His voice was urgent. Bernie turned but he couldn’t see him in the thick darkness.

‘I do not think I will last through the cold weather,’ Vicente said.

‘Of course you will.’

‘If I don’t, I want you to promise me something. The black beetles will come at the end; they will try to give me absolution. Stop them. I might weaken you see, I know people weaken. It would betray everything I have lived for. Please stop them somehow.’

Bernie felt tears pricking at his eyes. ‘All right,’ he whispered back. ‘If it ever comes to it, I promise.’ Vicente reached across, found Bernie’s arm and clutched it with his thin hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You are a good friend. You will help me make my last defiance.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

IN MADRID November the first dawned cold and damp. Harry’s flat was gloomy, despite the watercolours of English landscapes he had borrowed from the embassy to cover the blank walls.

Sometimes he thought of the vanished commissar. He wondered what sort of a commissar Bernie would have made if he had lived and his side had won. Harry’s job had been to encourage Barbara to talk about Sandy when they met, and they had hardly mentioned Bernie’s name; he felt oddly ashamed, as though they had written him out of their pasts. Bernie might have made an efficient commissar, he thought, he had had a hard angry streak along with the social compassion. But he couldn’t see him becoming one of those he had heard about, who during the Civil War sentenced soldiers to be shot for grumbling.

He took his tea, Liptons supplied by the embassy, over to the window. He had lit the brasero and a welcome warmth stole from the little stove under the table. Rain dripped slowly from the balconies opposite. He had hated asking Barbara questions about Sandy, ferreting for information, and had been relieved when she didn’t seem to know anything. He supposed that didn’t make him much of a spy.

Harry had a session translating at an Interior Ministry function that morning, then another appointment with Sandy at the Café Rocinante. He had telephoned Sandy the day after his walk with Barbara. He said things were quiet at the embassy, did Sandy fancy meeting up again? He had accepted eagerly.

Harry went down to the street and set off for the cafe. He looked around him carefully, as usual, but there was no sign that Enrique had been replaced by another, more efficient spy.

SANDY WAS already at the Rocinante when Harry arrived, sitting at a table with his foot on a wooden block as a ragged ten-year-old boy cleaned his shoes. He waved an arm at Harry.

‘Over here! Excuse me if I don’t get up.’

Harry sat down. The cafe was quiet this afternoon; perhaps the rain and fog were keeping people indoors.

‘Filthy weather, eh?’ Sandy said cheerfully. ‘Like being back home.’

‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘It’s all right, I’ve only been here a few minutes myself. Winter’s coming, I’m afraid.’ The boy sat back on his haunches and Sandy inspected his shoes.

‘OK, niño.’ He passed a coin to the boy, who turned big sad eyes to Harry. ‘I clean your shoes, señor?’

‘No, gracias.’

‘Oh go on, Harry, it’s only ten centimos.’

Harry nodded and the boy placed the wooden block under his foot and began polishing the black shoes Harry himself had cleaned an hour before. Sandy beckoned the waiter and they ordered coffee. The boy finished with Harry’s shoes; Harry passed him a coin and he moved on to other customers, whispering, ‘¿Limpiabotas?’ in a sad wheedling tone.

‘Poor little bastard,’ Harry said.

‘He tried to sell me some dirty postcards last week. Awful things, middle-aged whores lifting their knickers. He’d better watch out if the civiles catch him.’

The waiter brought their coffees. Sandy studied Harry thoughtfully. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘how did Barbara seem when you saw her?’

‘Fine. We went for a walk in the Casa de Campo.’ She hadn’t seemed fine at all; there was something closed and reserved about her he’d never seen before but he wasn’t going to talk to Sandy about that. It was one loyalty he could avoid betraying.

‘She didn’t seem preoccupied, worried?’

‘Not really.’

‘Hmm.’ Sandy lit a cigar. ‘There’s something up with her, has been for a few weeks. She says it’s nothing but I’m not so sure.’ He smiled. ‘Oh well, maybe this voluntary work will take her out of herself. Did she tell you about that?’

‘Yes. It sounded like a good thing.’

‘And you had an encounter with the Falange in the restaurant.’ Sandy raised his eyebrows.

Harry nodded. ‘Just a bit of rudeness.’

Sandy laughed. ‘Hitler said once that Fascism can turn a worm into a dragon. It’s done that to a good few worms here. Oh well, you just have to let them breathe their fire and smoke. It gets a bit wearing though.’ He smiled with sudden affection. ‘It’s good to see a sober English face sometimes.’

‘It must be odd, working with these people. The Ministry of Mines you work with mainly, isn’t it? You were saying the other night.’

Sandy nodded, running a hand over his moustache. ‘That’s right. All my dinosaur hunting came in useful in the end, you know. More useful than that Latin they used to fill our heads with. I know a bit about geology – I met this mining engineer at a function a while back and we ended up going into business.’

‘Really?’ That’s Otero, Harry thought. He tried to hide his interest.

‘Franco’s economic policy is to make Spain as self-sufficient as possible,’ Sandy went on, ‘relying on its own resources instead of being at the mercy of foreign powers. Classic fascist stuff. So if you’re in mining exploration, the opportunities are limitless. They’ll even subsidize exploration costs if you can supply the expertise.’ He paused, studying Harry so keenly that for a moment Harry was afraid he knew.

‘You remember the other night, when I said I could give you a few business tips?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can make a lot of money here if you know where to invest.’

Harry nodded encouragingly. ‘I’ve saved quite a bit from my allowance over the years. Sometimes I’ve thought I’d like to do something with it rather than just have it sitting in the bank.’

Sandy leaned forward and clapped him on the arm. ‘Then I’m your man. I’d enjoy helping you make some money. Especially in mining, as a reward for coming with me on all those fossil-hunting expeditions.’ He inclined his head. ‘They didn’t bore you, did they?’

‘No. I enjoyed them.’

‘Still fascinates me. The things hidden in the earth.’ He nodded judicially. ‘Let me see what I can do. I’ll have to be a bit careful; the Falangists at the ministry make an exception for me but they don’t like Brits.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll think of something. I’d like to show you I’ve made a success.’ He paused, gave Harry one of his keen looks. ‘You’ve been a bit dubious about that, haven’t you?’

‘Well …’

‘I’ve seen it in your face, Harry. You’ve wondered what I’m doing mixing with these people. Barbara still wonders the same, I’ve seen it in her face too. But you can’t be choosy in business.’

‘It takes time to realize how – complicated everything is here.’

Sandy gave a quick ironic smile. ‘It’s complicated all right. Did you go to that party at General Maestre’s?’

‘Yes. I’m supposed to be taking his daughter to the Prado.’ He would have to ring her tonight; he had been putting it off.

‘Nice girl?’

‘Very young. They were all Monarchists at the party. Didn’t like the Falange at all.’

‘They want an authoritarian monarchy, the aristocrats in charge like fifty years ago. But everything would just fall apart again.’

‘They’re pro-Allied.’

‘Don’t get them wrong, Harry. They’re hard as stone. They all fought for Franco in the war; the Monarchists’ pal Juan March financed the original army rebellion.’

‘I’ve been hearing that name a lot lately.’

‘The Falange reckon he’s conspiring with the Monarchists and has links with the Allies. They say he’s bribing the generals, buying their support for keeping Spain out of the war.’

And then Harry saw, it was like a light going on in his head. Bribery. That was what Hillgarth and Maestre had been talking about that day. The Knights of St George was a code for sovereigns, George slaying the dragon on the obverse. They would pay them in sovereigns. He took a deep breath.

‘You all right?’ Sandy asked him.

‘Yes. I just – remembered something.’ He took a drink of coffee and forced himself back to the present. ‘Tell me,’ he said for something to say, ‘do you hear anything of your brother now?’

‘Haven’t heard from Peter in nine years. After I was sacked from Rookwood Dad didn’t want me near him. He said I belonged to the lost, he couldn’t understand how anyone could do anything so wicked as what I did.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Putting spiders in a master’s room. God, if he could see some of the things that have gone on here. Anyway, after I left home I never heard any more from Dad, nor from Peter the perfect son either.’ A bitter note came into his voice. ‘I’m sure Pete’s being heroic as an army padre somewhere.’ He lit a cigar.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

‘It’s all right. Look, about that other business, let me talk to one or two people, see what I can arrange.’

‘That’d be good.’ He hesitated. ‘Can you tell me any more about it?’

Sandy smiled and shook his head. ‘Not yet. Matter of business confidentiality. He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better be going, I’ve a meeting of my Jewish Committee.’

‘Barbara said you were doing some work with refugees.’

‘Yes, they keep coming across the Pyrenees. They try and get to Portugal, in case Franco enters the war and hands them back to Hitler. Some of them are in a bad way when they arrive – we try to clean them up and help them with papers.’ He gave a little smile, as though embarrassed at his charity. ‘I like to help them; I suppose I’ve always felt a bit of a wandering Jew myself.’ He sat up. ‘Well, I must go. My treat. But we must do this again. I’m nearly always here at this time.’

HARRY BEGAN walking home. It was still cold and dank. The conversation between Maestre and Hillgarth kept coming back to him, Hillgarth’s terse order to forget Juan March and the Knights of St George. Could the embassy be involved in bribing ministers too? It seemed far-fetched once he thought about it; dangerous, too, if Franco found out.

He shook his head, there was a feeling of pressure in his bad ear, that faint annoying buzzing again. Perhaps it was the damp weather. He thought again about Miss Maxse saying they couldn’t win this war by playing a straight bat. What else was it she had said – about people who got involved with extremist politics? ‘Sometimes it’s the excitement as much as the politics.’ Sandy had always enjoyed taking risks – was that why he had ended up here? He wondered again about the Jews. Sandy had a good side. He would help people, if he was in charge: like educating him about fossils; like running Barbara’s life, which is what he seemed to be doing.

He ought to go back to the embassy and report his progress. They would be delighted with the offer to involve him in one of Sandy’s schemes. Of course it might be something else, nothing to do with the gold. But he kept thinking of the Knights of St George, what it all might mean. And what if they failed, if the Falangists won the struggle for Franco’s ear and Spain entered the war? People like Maestre could be in danger; perhaps he wanted to get his daughter out of the country, if he could.

He realized he had wandered almost as far as the Puerta de Toledo. He stopped and stood momentarily, watching the carts and beat-up old cars passing by. Some of them looked as though they had been on the road for twenty years, as they probably had. A gasogene spluttered past. He had heard nothing from Sofia about a doctor for Enrique, it had been over a week now. What if Enrique developed rabies? Harry had heard the Chinese believed that if you saved someone’s life you were bound to them for ever, but he knew it was Sofia that kept the family in his mind. He hesitated, then crossed the road and headed down towards Carabanchel.

Sofia’s street, like all the others in the barrio, was silent and deserted. Dusk was starting to fall as he stopped in front of the tenement. Two children rolling an old cartwheel up and down like a hoop stopped and stared at him. Their bare feet were red with cold. Harry was conscious of his thick coat and wide-brimmed hat.

He went into the dank entrance, hesitated a moment, then mounted the damp stairs and knocked at their door. As he did so, the door of the neighbouring flat opened and an elderly woman came out. She had a round wrinkled face and cold sharp eyes. Harry raised his hat. ‘Buenas tardes.’

‘Buenas tardes,’ she replied suspiciously, just as Sofia opened her door. She looked at him in surprise, her large brown eyes widening.

‘Oh. Señor Brett.’

Harry tipped his hat again. ‘Buenas tardes. I’m sorry to trouble you, I just wondered how Enrique was.’

Sofia glanced across at her neighbour, who was still peering at him nosily. ‘Buenas tardes, Señora Avila,’ she said in a hard tone. ‘Buen’dia,’ the old woman muttered. She closed her door and scuttled away down the stairs. Sofia looked after her a moment, then turned to Harry.

‘Please come in, señor,’ she said gravely. She did not smile.

Harry followed her into the cold damp salón. The old woman in the bed was using her good hand to play draughts with the little boy. At the sight of Harry he shrank back, shoulders twitching. She put her good arm round him.

‘Buenas tardes,’ Harry said to her. ‘How are you?’

‘Well enough, señor, thank you.’

Enrique was sitting at the table, his leg up on a cushion, swathed in bandages. His long thin face had a feverish look. It brightened at the sight of Harry.

‘Señor. It is good to see you again.’ He leaned across and shook Harry’s hand.

‘How’s the leg?’

‘Still bad. Sofia cleans it but it doesn’t really get better.’

His sister looked embarrassed. ‘It needs time,’ she said.

There were some childish drawings on the table. Harry looked at them and then his eyes widened. Two Civil Guards, their green uniforms and yellow webbing coloured in exactly the right shade, were shooting a woman, little red jets coming out of her body. Alongside was a drawing of another civil being hanged from a lamppost, a little boy hauling him up on a rope. But the picture had been scored through with thick black lines.

‘Paco did those,’ Sofia said gently. ‘He makes those drawings then crosses them out and gets upset. Only Mama can calm him. The noise he made this morning, I thought it would bring Señora Avila over.’

Harry looked at the little boy. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Señor Brett,’ Sofia said hesitantly. ‘I wonder if I might talk to you in the kitchen.’

‘Of course.’

Harry followed her into a concrete-floored room lined with cheap cabinets. The light was fading; she switched on the light, the low-watt bulb casting a dim yellow glow over the room. It was clean, though the sink was overflowing with dishes. Sofia followed his glance.

‘I have to cook and wash up for them all now.’

‘No – I didn’t mean—’

‘Please, sit down.’ She motioned Harry to a chair by the kitchen table, then sat opposite, her small hands clasped in front of her. She looked at him thoughtfully.

‘I did not expect you to come back,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘I never got that doctor’s bill.’

‘I hoped Enrique’s leg would improve on its own.’ She sighed. ‘But the infection will not clear. I think yes, he needs a doctor.’

‘My offer still stands.’

She frowned. ‘You will forgive me, señor, but why should you help us? After Enrique spied on you?’

‘I just felt I’d become involved. Please, it’s only a doctor’s bill; I can help you with that. I can afford it.’

‘That old one in the flat next door, if she hears I am getting money from foreign diplomats I know what she will think.’

Harry reddened. Was that what Sofia thought too? ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’ He half rose. ‘I only wanted to help.’

‘No, I see that. Please stay.’ Sofia’s tone became apologetic. She sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘But it is a surprise, a foreigner offering to help us, after what Enrique did.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think my brother needs some of the new penicillin.’

‘Then let me help. I can see things are – difficult.’

She smiled then, illuminating her face. ‘Very well. Thank you.’

‘Get the doctor, get any medicines your brother needs, then send me the bill. That’s all you need to do.’

She looked uncomfortable. ‘I am sorry, Señor Brett, you have saved my brother’s life and I have not even thanked you properly.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘Everyone is suspicious of everyone else these days.’ She got up.

‘Will you take coffee? It’s not very good, it won’t be what you’re used to.’

‘Thank you, yes.’

She filled a big black kettle at the sink. ‘That old bitch you saw on the landing, now Enrique is ill she wants us to give Paquito to the church orphanage. But we won’t. They are not good places.’

‘No?’ He was about to say he knew someone who was volunteering at one of them, but decided not to. Sofia handed him a cup of coffee. He looked at her. Where did she get such self-possession, such energy? Her hair was jet-black but where it caught the light it had a brown tinge.

‘Have you worked at the embassy for long?’ she asked.

‘Only a few weeks, actually. I was invalided out of the army.’

‘So you have fought?’ There was a new respect in her voice.

‘Yes. In France.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘A bit of ear damage when a shell went off. It’s getting better.’ He was aware of the pressure in his head, though, still there.

‘You were lucky.’

‘Yes. I suppose I was.’ He hesitated. ‘I had a bit of shell shock, too. Over that now.’

She hesitated, then said, ‘So. You have fought the Fascists.’

‘Yes. Yes, I have.’ He looked at her. ‘I’d do it again.’

‘Yet many people admire the Generalísimo. I knew an English boy during the Civil War, a volunteer. He said many English people think Franco is a fine Spanish gentleman.’

‘I don’t, señorita.’

‘He was from Leeds, this boy. Do you know Leeds?’

‘No. It’s in the north.’

‘My father met him in the battles in the Casa de Campo. They both died there.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He wondered if the boy had been her lover.

‘We have to make the best of things now.’ She took out a cigarette and lit it.

‘No chance for you to go back to medical school?’

She shook her head. ‘With Mama and Paquito to look after? And Enrique now too?’

‘With treatment perhaps he could work again.’

‘Yes, and a different job this time.’ She flicked ash angrily into a saucer. ‘I told him he should not take that work.’ She looked at him acutely again. ‘How did you come to learn Spanish so well?’

‘I’m a teacher, a lecturer, in England; at least, I was before the war came. Our war,’ he added. ‘I visited Spain in 1931, I told you, I suppose that’s when my interest started.’

She smiled sadly. ‘Our time of hope.’

‘The friend I came here with in 1931, he came back to fight in the Civil War. He was killed at the Jarama.’

‘Did you support the Republic too?’

‘Bernie did. He was the idealist. I believed in neutrality.’

‘And now?’

Harry didn’t answer. Sofia smiled. ‘You remind me of the boy from Leeds in a way, he had the same puzzlement in the face of Spain.’ She rose. ‘And now I should arrange for the doctor.’

Harry followed her back to the salón. ‘Enrique,’ she said. ‘I have been talking to Señor Brett, I am going to get you a doctor. I will go now.’

Enrique gave a sigh of relief. ‘Thank goodness. My leg is not a pretty sight. Thank you, señor. My sister is obstinate.’

The old woman tried to heave herself up. ‘You are kind to us.’

‘De nada,’ Harry said awkwardly. The little boy stared at him with fearful eyes. Harry looked round the room again, taking in the musty smell, the stains of damp under the window. He felt ashamed of his own wealth and security.

‘Señora Avila was hovering about again when Señor Brett arrived,’ Sofia told her mother.

‘That beata,’ the old woman slurred. ‘She thinks if she tells enough tales to the priests, God will make her a saint.’

Sofia reddened. ‘Would you mind leaving first, Señor Brett? If we are seen leaving together there will be talk.’

‘Of course,’ Harry said, uncomfortably.

Enrique heaved himself up. ‘Thank you again, señor.’

Harry said his goodbyes and walked slowly back to the tram stop in the Puerta de Toledo. He watched the ground for potholes and the coverless drains that sent a sickly stench up into the street. If you did not watch out, you could break a leg. He felt sad that now he might just get a doctor’s bill, and that would be the end of it. They would not expect him to come back. But somehow, he decided, he would see Sofia again.

Chapter Twenty-Three

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY was a busy day at the embassy. Harry had arranged to meet Milagros Maestre at the Prado at four but a press release from the embassy about British victories in North Africa needed translating into Spanish and he was a quarter of an hour late.

He had rung her at the weekend. He hadn’t wanted to but he couldn’t just leave it, it would be rude; Tolhurst had said it might annoy Maestre and they couldn’t afford that. Milagros sounded delighted and immediately accepted his invitation.

He had visited the Prado before, with Bernie one afternoon in 1931. It had been bustling with activity then but now the huge building was quiet. He bought his ticket and passed through into the main hall. There were hardly any visitors, fewer than the attendants who paced slowly round, keys clinking at their belts and footsteps echoing hollowly. The light was poor and in the dull winter afternoon the building had a gloomy, abandoned feel.

He half ran down the steps to the cafe where he had arranged to meet Milagros. She was sitting at the only occupied table, at the far end of the cafe. He was surprised to see a man sitting opposite her. The man turned and Harry recognized Maestre’s companion from the ball, Lieutenant Gomez. There was a frown on his hard square face. Milagros smiled, looking relieved.

‘Ah, Señor Brett,’ Gomez said reprovingly. ‘We were beginning to wonder if you were coming.’

‘I’m so sorry, I was held up at the embassy.’ He turned to Milagros. ‘Please forgive me.’

‘It is nothing,’ she said. ‘Please, Alfonso, it is nothing.’ She was wearing an expensive fur coat and her brown hair was freshly set in a permanent wave. She was dressed as a grown woman but Harry thought again how child-like her plump face was.

Gomez grunted. He stubbed out a cigarette and rose. ‘I will leave you. Milagros, I will see you in the entrance at half past five. Good afternoon, Señor Brett.’ His look was cold as he shook hands. Harry remembered the basket of roses Maestre was supposed to have presented to the nuns, with the Moroccan heads in the middle. He wondered if Gomez had been there.

He sat opposite Milagros. ‘I’m afraid I’ve offended him.’

She shook her head. ‘Don Alfonso is too protective. He takes me everywhere, he is my chaperone. Do girls still have chaperones in England?’

‘No. Not really.’

She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her pocket. Good cigarettes, Lucky Strike, not the poisonous things Sofia had been smoking. He had found himself thinking of Sofia all over the weekend.

‘Would you like one, Señor Brett?’

He smiled. ‘No thanks. And call me Harry.’

Milagros blew out a long draught of smoke. ‘Ah, that is better. They don’t like me smoking, they think I am too young.’ She blushed. ‘They think it is a sign of bad morals.’

‘All the women I know smoke.’

‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘Not just now, thanks, maybe after we’ve seen the pictures?’

‘That would be nice. I will finish this then.’ She smiled nervously. ‘It is a treat for me to smoke in public.’ She blew out a blue cloud of smoke, angling her face away from him.

Harry didn’t mind visiting art galleries if he didn’t have to stay too long, but he wasn’t really an enthusiast. The sense of the Prado’s cavernous emptiness grew as they walked through the echoing galleries. Most of them were largely bare, empty spaces on the wall where the pictures had been lost or stolen during the Civil War. Black-uniformed guards sat on chairs in the corners, reading Arriba.

Milagros was even more ignorant of art than Harry. They would stop before one and he or she would make some stilted remark and move on.

In the Goya room the dark horror of the ‘Pinturas Negras’ seemed to make her uneasy. ‘He paints cruel things,’ she said quietly, looking at the ‘Witches Sabbath’.

‘He saw a lot of war. I think we’ve done nearly everything now – would you like a coffee?’

She smiled at him gratefully. ‘Oh yes. Thank you.’

The galleries had been cold but the cafeteria was overheated. When he brought two cups of bad coffee over to their table she had taken off her coat, releasing an overpowering musk of expensive perfume. She had put on far too much. He felt suddenly sorry for her.

‘I should like to see the galleries in London,’ Milagros said. ‘I should like to see all of London. My mother says it is a great city.’

‘Has she been there?’

‘No, but she knows all about it. My parents love England.’

Spaniards didn’t like their daughters going out with foreigners, Harry knew, but in these times a place in England would be a desirable destination in the eyes of someone like Maestre. He looked into her plump earnest face.

‘Every country looks better from a distance.’

‘Perhaps.’ Milagros looked downcast. ‘But it must be better than Spain, here everything is so poor and dirty, so inculto.’

Harry thought of Sofia and her maimed family in that flat. ‘Your father has a fine house.’

‘But it is all so insecure. We had to flee Madrid during the war, you know. Now there is this new war hanging over us, what if we lose everything again?’ She looked sad for a moment, then smiled again. ‘Tell me more about England. I have heard the countryside is pretty.’

‘Yes, it is very green.’

‘Even in summer?’

‘Especially then. Green grass, lots of big, broad trees.’

‘Madrid used to be full of trees. When we came back the Reds had cut them all down for firewood.’ She sighed. ‘I was happier in Burgos.’

‘Things are pretty insecure in England too now. It was different before the war.’ He smiled. ‘I remember at school, there was nothing nicer than a long game of cricket on a summer afternoon.’ He had a vision of the green playing fields, the boys in cricket whites, the clop of bat and ball. It was like a dream, as far away as the world his parents’ photograph had been taken in.

‘I have heard of cricket.’ Milagros laughed nervously, looking more like a plump schoolgirl than ever. ‘But I do not know how it is played.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I am sorry, this afternoon – I do not know anything about paintings, either.’

‘Neither do I, really,’ he replied awkwardly.

‘It was just, I had to think of somewhere we might go. But if you like we could go out to the country some time, I could show you the Guadarrama mountains in winter. Alfonso could take us in the car.’

‘Yes, yes perhaps.’ She was blushing, there was no doubt about it, she was soft on him. Oh hell, Harry thought. He looked at the wall clock. ‘It’s time to go,’ he said. ‘Alfonso will be waiting. Mustn’t annoy him again.’

Her mouth quivered slightly. ‘Yes.’

The old soldier was standing on the steps of the Prado, smoking and staring across the road at the Ritz. It was starting to get dark. He turned and this time he smiled at Harry.

‘Ah, right on time. Bueno. Did you have a good time, Milagros?’

‘Yes, Alfonso.’

‘You must tell your Mama all about the pictures you saw. The car is round the corner.’ He took Harry’s hand. ‘Perhaps I shall see you again, Señor Brett.’

‘Yes, Lieutenant Gomez.’ Harry shook hands with Milagros. She looked at him expectantly but he said nothing about meeting again. Her face fell and he felt guilty but he wasn’t going to string her along. He watched as they walked away. Why did she like him, they’d nothing in common at all. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said again, aloud.

HARRY WAS MEETING Tolhurst for a drink at the Café Gijón. He passed the ministry where he had met Maestre, the street patrolled by civiles with sub-machine guns. He pulled his coat collar up. It was cold again; after the baking summer and the failed harvest, it looked like a cold winter was coming.

Paseo de Recoletos was a broad, tree-lined avenue. The shops were reopening after the siesta, yellow light spilling on to the pavement. Even here the window displays were sparse. He had heard of the Gijón but never been there. Walking into the mirrored bar he saw people scattered about the tables. There were artistic types with beards and extravagant moustaches but no doubt they were regime supporters, like Dalí. ‘Fascism is the dream made real,’ a young man was saying enthusiastically to his companion; ‘the surreal made real.’ You can say that again, Harry thought.

Tolhurst was sitting with his bulk squeezed in behind a table against the wall. Harry raised a hand, then fetched a brandy from the bar and joined him.

‘How was the date?’ Tolhurst asked.

Harry took a slug of the brandy. ‘That’s better. Pretty awful actually. She’s nice enough but she’s – well – just a kid. She had a chaperone. Maestre’s ex-batman or whatever he is.’

‘They’ve got very old-fashioned ideas about women.’ Tolhurst looked at him. ‘Try and keep in with her if you can, it’s a link to Maestre.’

‘She wants to go for a drive in the Guadarrama.’

‘Ah.’ Tolhurst smiled. ‘Get you on her own, eh?’

‘With Gomez driving.’

‘Ah well.’ Tolhurst blew out his plump cheeks. ‘Oh God, I wish I was back home sometimes. I get homesick.’

‘Missing your family?’

Tolhurst lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl up to the ceiling. ‘Not really. My father’s in the army, haven’t seen him for ages.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in London, enjoy the high life. Never managed to – first it was school and then the diplomatic service.’ He sighed again. ‘It’s probably too late now. With the bombing and the blackout, all that sort of life must be over.’ He shook his head. ‘Have you seen the papers? They’re still saying how well Franco got on with Hitler at Hendaye. And Sam’s in appeasement mode; he’s told Franco Britain would be happy to see Spain take Morocco and Algeria from the French.’

‘What? As Spanish colonies?’

‘Yes. He’s playing up to Franco’s dreams of empire. Can see his reasoning, I suppose. The French are finished as a power.’

Tolhurst spoke of what ‘Sam’ was doing as though he was the ambassador’s confidant, as he often did, though Harry knew he was probably just repeating embassy gossip.

‘We’ve got the blockade,’ Harry said. ‘We could turn off their food and oil supplies like a tap. Maybe it’s time we did. Warn them off Hitler.’

‘It’s not that simple. If we left them with nothing to lose they could join the Germans, march in and take Gibraltar.’

Harry took another swig of brandy. ‘D’you remember that night at the Ritz? I overheard Hoare saying there mustn’t be any British support for special operations here. I remember a speech Churchill made just before I came out. Britain’s survival kindling sparks of hope in occupied Europe. We could help the people here instead of sucking up to the leaders.’

‘Steady on.’ Tolhurst laughed nervously. ‘The brandy’s going to your head. The Reds would come back if Franco fell. They’d be even worse.’

‘What does Captain Hillgarth think? He seemed to be agreeing with Sir Sam that night at the Ritz.’

Tolhurst shifted uncomfortably. ‘Actually, Harry, he’d be a bit annoyed if he knew he’d been overheard.’

‘It wasn’t deliberate.’

‘Anyway, I don’t know anything,’ he added wearily. ‘I’m just the dogsbody. I arrange things, debrief sources and query their expenses.’

‘Tell me,’ Harry asked, ‘have you ever heard the expression, “The Knights of St George”?’

Tolhurst’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked quietly.

‘Maestre used the phrase when he was talking to Captain Hillgarth, the first day I went with Hillgarth to do some translating. It means sovereigns, Tolly, doesn’t it?’ Tolhurst didn’t answer, just pursed his lips. Harry went on, not caring any more what protocols he might be breaking. ‘Hillgarth talked about Juan March as well. Are we involved in bribing the Monarchists? Is that the horse we’re backing to keep Spain out of the war? Is that why Hoare doesn’t want anything to do with the opposition?’

‘You know, Harry, it doesn’t do to be too curious.’ Tolhurst’s voice was still quiet. ‘It’s not our job to think about – well – policy. And for fuck’s sake, keep your voice down.’

‘I’m right, aren’t I? I can see it in your face.’ Harry leaned forward, whispering intently. ‘What if it comes unstuck and Franco finds out? We’d be in the shit then, and so would Maestre and his pals.’

‘The captain knows what he’s doing.’

‘And what if it works? We’re tied to these bastards for good. They’ll rule Spain for ever.’

Tolhurst took a deep breath. His face reddened, his expression was angry. ‘Christ, Harry, how long has this been going round in your noddle?’

‘I only guessed what the Knights of St George might be the other day.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t worry, Tolly, I won’t say anything.’

‘You’d better not, if you don’t want a charge of treason. This is what comes of recruiting academics,’ he said. ‘You’re too bloody curious.’ He laughed, trying to put matters back on a friendly footing. ‘I can’t tell you anything,’ he continued. ‘You must see that. But the captain and Sam know what they’re doing. I’ll have to tell the captain you’ve twigged this. You’re sure you’ve told nobody else.’

‘I swear, Tolly.’

‘Then have another, and forget about it.’

‘All right,’ Harry said. He wouldn’t forget, but there was no point in sailing into trouble. He wished he hadn’t followed his impulse to ask Tolhurst.

Tolhurst heaved himself up, wincing as the corner of the table caught his belly. Harry stared into his glass. He felt a moment’s panic, his beliefs about the world and his place in it shifting under him again, like sand.

Chapter Twenty-Four

THE MONEY ARRIVED on the fifth of November, the day before Barbara was due to meet Luis again. She was despairing of it ever coming and had prepared herself to plead with Luis to wait. As she grew more worried, Barbara knew she was becoming nervy and withdrawn. Sandy was clearly starting to wonder what was wrong with her. That morning she had pretended to be asleep while he dressed, though her eyes were open, staring down at the pillow, remembering it was Guy Fawkes Day. There would be no fireworks in England this year; they had enough real explosions every night. The BBC said there had been no more raids on the Midlands, but London was being bombed most nights. The Madrid papers said much of the city was reduced to rubble but she told herself that was propaganda.

After Sandy left she went down for the mail. There was one typed envelope on the mat with the King’s head on the stamp instead of Franco and his cold stare. She tore it open. In coldly formal tones, the bank told her they had transferred her savings to the account she had opened in Madrid: over 5000 pesetas. She could sense their disapproval of her taking money abroad in wartime.

She went back to the bedroom and put the letter in her bureau. There were a couple of guides to Cuenca in there now, which she had bought and studied carefully. She locked it.

She dressed hurriedly; she was due at the orphanage at nine. It was her second morning there. Yesterday she had worn her usual clothes but Sister Inmaculada had said she should not dirty a good dress. Barbara found it a relief to revert to an old skirt and baggy jumper. She glanced at her watch. It was time she was off.

BARBARA HAD ARRANGED to come to the orphanage twice a week but already she was unsure if she could continue. She had been a nurse before but never in conditions like this.

She thought of the scrubbed, clinical corridors of the Birmingham Municipal Hospital with nostalgia as she approached the orphanage. A gasogene passed, the foul-smelling smoke belching from its little chimney making her cough. She knocked at the door and a nun let her in.

The grey nineteenth-century building was a former monastery, built round a central square with pillared cloisters. The cloister walls were covered with anti-communist posters: a snarling ogre wearing a cap with a red star looming over a young mother and her children; a hammer and sickle in a montage with a skull and the legend, ‘This is Communism’. Yesterday she had asked Sister Inmaculada whether the posters might frighten the children. The tall nun had shaken her head sadly.

‘Nearly all these children come from Red families. They have to be reminded they lived in the devil’s shadow. Otherwise how can their little souls be saved?’

Sister Inmaculada was finishing roll-call in the central cloister as Barbara arrived, her clear high voice ringing round the yard, a cane tucked into the belt of her habit. Fifty boys and girls between six and twelve stood in lines on the concrete. She lowered her clipboard. ‘Dismiss,’ she called, then raised an arm in the Fascist salute. ‘¡Viva Franco!’ The children replied in a ragged chorus, arms waving vaguely up and down. Barbara remembered the concert, Franco suppressing his yawn. She walked to the infirmary; ‘Spain Reconquered for Christ!’ was painted over the door.

Her first job of the day was to check the health of newly admitted children to see if any needed referring to the doctor. Inside the cold infirmary with its iron beds and steel instruments hanging from the walls her helper, Señora Blanco, was waiting. She was an elderly retired cook, a beata, a religious woman whose life revolved around the church. She had tight grey curls and wore a brown apron; her plump face was wrinkled and at first sight kindly.

‘Buenas tardes, Señora Forsyth. I have hot water ready.’

‘Thank you, señora. How many have we got today?’

‘Only two. Brought by the civiles. A boy caught burgling a house and a little girl living wild.’ She shook her head piously.

Barbara washed her hands. The children who came to the orphanage were mostly feral, living by begging and stealing. Their begging was a nuisance and when the police picked them up they handed them over to the nuns.

Señora Blanco rang a little bell and a nun led in a red-haired boy of about eight wearing a greasy brown coat too big for him. Sister Teresa was young, with a square peasant face. ‘Caught stealing, the little beast,’ she said admonishingly.

‘What a bad child,’ Señora Blanco said sorrowfully. ‘Take off your clothes, child, let the nurse see you.’ The boy disrobed sullenly and stood naked: ribs poking out, arms like matchsticks. He lowered his head as Barbara examined him. He smelled of stale sweat and urine; his skin as cold as a plucked chicken.

‘He’s very thin,’ she said quietly. ‘Nits, of course.’ The boy had a long cut on his wrist, red and weeping. ‘That’s a nasty cut, niño,’ she said gently. ‘How did you get that?’

The boy looked up with big frightened eyes. ‘A cat,’ he muttered. ‘It came into my cellar. I tried to pick it up and it scratched me.’

Barbara smiled. ‘Bad cat. We’ll put some ointment on it. Then we’ll get you something to eat, would you like that?’ He nodded. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Ivan, señora.’

Señora Blanco compressed her lips. ‘Who gave you that name?’

‘My parents.’

‘Where are your parents now?’

‘The civiles took them.’

‘Ivan is a bad name, a Russian name, do you not know that? The nuns will find you a better one.’ The boy hung his head.

‘I think that’s all,’ Barbara said. She wrote on a card and handed it to Señora Blanco, who led the boy away. Sister Teresa left by the other door to fetch the next child. The beata returned a few moments later, wiping her hands on her dark apron. ‘Dear Lord, how he smelt.’

There was a commotion outside. Barbara heard high thin screams and the door was flung open. Sister Teresa dragged in a scrawny dark-haired girl of about eleven, struggling frantically. The nun was red-faced and her coif had been knocked askew, giving her a drunken look.

‘Madre de Dios, she struggles worse than a pig.’ Sister Teresa gripped the child’s arms hard, forcing her to stand still. ‘Stop that or you’ll get the cane! The devil is in this one. She was living in an empty house in Carabanchel – the civiles had to chase her round the streets.’

Barbara bent down in front of the girl. She was breathing heavily, lips drawn back over bad teeth, eyes wide with terror. She wore a filthy blue dress and clutched a little woolly donkey, so dirty and torn it was hardly recognizable.

‘What’s your name?’ Barbara asked gently.

The girl swallowed. ‘Are you a nun?’

‘No, I’m a nurse. I just want to examine you, see whether you need a doctor.’

The girl looked at her beseechingly. ‘Please let me go. I don’t want to be made into soup.’

‘What?’

‘The nuns make children into soup, feed it to Franco’s soldiers. Please, please, make them let me go.’

Sister Teresa laughed. ‘You can see who’s brought this one up.’

Señora Blanco frowned at the girl. ‘Those are wicked lies the Reds told. You’re a bad child to say such things. Now get undressed for the nurse. And give me that!’ She reached for the woolly donkey but the girl clutched it tighter. Señora Blanco’s face flushed with anger.

‘Give that to me. Don’t defy me, you little Red!’ She grabbed the toy and pulled sharply. It tore in two, white stuffing flying out. The beata was caught off balance and the girl jumped away, screaming. She ran under a bed and crouched there, holding the donkey’s head, all that was left, to her face and howling. Señora Blanco threw the rest to the floor. ‘Little bitch—’

‘Be quiet!’ Barbara snapped. The beata looked affronted. Sister Teresa folded her arms and looked on with interest as Barbara bent down to the girl.

‘I’m sorry,’ Barbara said gently. ‘It was an accident. Perhaps I could mend your burro.’

The girl rubbed the head against her cheek. ‘Fernandito, Fernandito – she killed him.’

‘Give him to me. I’ll sew him back together. I promise. What’s your name?’

The girl studied her suspiciously, unused to a kind tone. ‘Carmela,’ she whispered. ‘Carmela Mera Varela.’

Barbara felt a jolt in her stomach. Mera. The name of Bernie’s friends. And they had lived in Carabanchel. She remembered her visits three years ago – the big amiable father, the overworked mother, the boy with TB. There had been a little girl too, about eight then.

‘Do – do you have a family?’

The girl shook her head, biting her lip. ‘There was a big shell,’ she said. ‘Afterwards I found an empty cellar for me and Fernandito.’ She began to cry, quiet anguished sobs.

Barbara reached in but the girl wriggled away, still crying desperately. Barbara stood up.

‘Dear God, she must have been living wild for years.’ She knew she mustn’t say she knew her, knew her family. A Red family.

‘Might we perhaps get her out of there?’ Señora Blanco asked coldly.

Barbara knelt again. ‘Carmela, I promise the nuns won’t hurt you. They’ll feed you, give you warm clothes. You’ll be all right if you do what they say but they’ll be angry if you don’t come out. If you do, I promise I’ll mend your burro, sew him together. But you must come out.’

This time the child let Barbara pull her gently from under the bed. ‘Good, Carmela. Now, stand still, take your dress off so I can look at you. Yes, that’s right, give me Fernandito, I’ll take care of him.’

The child’s arms and legs were covered with eczema; Barbara wondered how she had survived. ‘She’s very undernourished. How did you get food to eat, Carmelcita?’

‘I beg.’ A look of defiance came into her eyes. ‘I take things.’

‘Come on,’ Sister Teresa said brusquely. ‘Get dressed and let’s get you registered. And no more fun and games. You’ll get some food if you behave. Otherwise it’ll be the cane.’

The child put on her dress. Sister Teresa laid a plump red hand firmly on her shoulder. As she was led firmly away, Carmela turned and gave Barbara an anguished look. ‘I’ll bring Fernandito in a day or two,’ Barbara called. ‘I promise.’ The door closed behind her.

Señora Blanco snorted. ‘All this rubbish.’ She bent down, picking up lumps of Fernandito’s stuffing. Squeezing them into a tight ball, she threw it into a wastebasket together with the other half of the donkey’s woolly skin. Barbara marched over and pulled it all out again, putting it in her pocket.

‘I promised I’d mend it.’

The beata snorted. ‘Filthy thing. They won’t let her keep it, you know.’ She stepped closer, her eyes narrowed. ‘Señora Forsyth, in all charity I wonder if you are suited to the work here. We cannot afford sentimentality in Spain now. Perhaps you should discuss it with Sister Inmaculada.’ With a toss of her tight curls, she walked out of the infirmary.

AT HOME that afternoon Barbara tried to sew the donkey back together. It was dirty and greasy and she had to be careful putting the stuffing back or it would end up looking shapeless. She used her strongest thread but she wasn’t sure it would withstand constant handling by a child. She couldn’t stop thinking about Carmela. Had she come from that family, Bernie’s friends? Were the others all dead?

Pilar came in to stoke the fire. She looked at Barbara oddly. Barbara supposed she must look strange, sitting there in her old clothes in the salón, sewing up a child’s toy with frantic concentration.

When she had finished she stood the donkey on the hearth. She hadn’t made a bad job. She poured herself a gin and tonic, lit a cigarette and sat looking at it. It had the meek enduring expression of a real burro.

At seven Sandy came in. He warmed his hands at the fire, smiling down at her. Barbara hadn’t bothered to put the overhead light on and, apart from a pool of light from the reading lamp in which cigarette smoke swirled, the room was dark.

Sandy looked sleek and comfortable. ‘It’s cold out,’ he said. He looked in surprise at the donkey. ‘What on earth’s that?’

‘That’s Fernandito.’

He frowned. ‘Who?’

‘It belongs to a child at the orphanage. It got torn when she was brought in.’

Sandy grunted. ‘You don’t want to get too involved with those children.’

‘I thought it was useful to you, me working there. The marquesa connection.’ She reached to the gin bottle on her sewing table and poured herself another. Sandy looked at her.

‘How many of those have you had?’

‘Only one. Want one?’

Sandy took a glass and sat opposite her. ‘I’m seeing Harry Brett again the day after tomorrow. I think I’m going to be able to bring him in on something.’

Barbara sighed. ‘Don’t involve him in anything shady, for God’s sake. He’d hate that. And he works for the embassy, they have to be careful.’

‘It’s just a business opportunity.’ He frowned at her.

‘If you say so.’ She never usually talked to him like this, but she was depressed and exhausted.

‘You don’t seem awfully interested in Harry,’ Sandy said. ‘I thought he was so wonderful to you when Piper went west.’

She stared at him without replying. There was a nasty look in his eyes for a moment, something angry and cruel. With his heavy features lit by the firelight he looked middle-aged and dissipated. He shifted in his chair, then smiled.

‘I told him you’d join us for coffee afterwards. Just the three of us.’

‘All right.’

He smiled again. ‘Funny chap, Harry,’ he went on reflectively. ‘Sometimes you don’t know what he’s thinking – he gets this quiet frowning look and you know he’s turning something over.’

‘I always found him very straightforward. D’you want the light on?’

His dark eyes fixed on her. ‘What’s the matter with you these days, Barbara? I thought doing some nursing might cheer you up but you’re gloomier than ever.’

She studied him. He didn’t look suspicious, just irritated. ‘If you saw the things I see at the orphanage, you’d be gloomy.’ She sighed. ‘Or would you? Maybe not.’

‘You’ll have to snap out of it. I’ve a lot on at the moment.’

‘I’m just tired, Sandy.’

‘You’re letting yourself go, look at that tatty old jumper.’

‘I wear it for the orphanage.’

‘Well, you’re not at the orphanage now, are you?’ He was annoyed, she could see. ‘It reminds me of when I first met you. And you need your hair waved again. I can see why those girls used to call you frizzy-hair. And you keep wearing those glasses.’

The strength of the pain and anger that rose inside her surprised Barbara. Very occasionally, if she crossed him, Sandy would strike out like this. He knew how to wound. It was hard to keep a tremor from her voice. She got up. ‘I’ll go up and change,’ she said.

Sandy gave his broad smile. ‘That’s more like it. I’ve got some papers to read – tell Pilar we’ll have dinner at eight.’

She left the salón. On the way upstairs she thought, when I’ve got Bernie out I’ll go back to England. Away from this terrible place, away from him.

LUIS WASN’T at the cafe when she arrived the next day. She looked in through the window and there were only a few workmen sitting at the bar. It was a cold grey afternoon.

She went to the counter and ordered a coffee. The fat old woman looked at her speculatively. ‘Another assignment, señora?’ she asked, then gave a wink. Barbara flushed and said nothing.

‘Your amigo is quite handsome, señora, sí? Your coffee.’

An old couple were sitting at one of the tables, hunched over empty cups. They had been here last time, Barbara thought, as she took the usual table and lit a cigarette. She studied them. They didn’t look like spies, just an old poor couple spending time in the cafe because it was warm. She sipped her coffee; it tasted like hot dirty water. She had been there ten minutes, getting more and more anxious, before Luis arrived. He was breathless and apologetic. He fetched a coffee and hurried over to her.

‘Señora, I am sorry, desculpeme. I have been moving to new lodgings.’

‘Never mind. Have you any news?’

He nodded and leaned forward, his face eager. ‘Yes. We have made progress. Agustín has already got himself on the quarry rota as a guard. At the right time, he will arrange with your friend that he will ask to go to the toilet, say he has’ – he coughed, embarrassed – ‘diarrhoea. Then he will hit Agustín on the head, steal the key to his shackles, and run off.’

‘They wear shackles?’ It was one of the horrors she had imagined.

‘He would be shackled to go to the toilet, yes.’

Barbara thought a few moments, then nodded. ‘All right.’ She lit another cigarette and passed him the packet. ‘When? The longer we wait the riskier it is. Not just the political situation. I can’t stand much more of this, my – husband – has noticed I’m not myself.’

Luis shifted in his seat. ‘That is a problem, I am afraid. Agustín is due three weeks’ leave, starting next week. He will not be back until early December. It will have to wait until then.’

‘But that’s a month away! Can’t he change his leave?’

‘Señora, please speak quietly. Think how suspicious it would be if Agustín suddenly cancelled the leave he booked months ago, and then he was on duty when there was an escape.’

‘This is bad. What if Spain comes into the war, what if I have to leave?’

‘They have been saying we will come in since June and nothing has happened, even after the Caudillo’s meeting with Hitler. It will be done, señora, I promise, as soon as possible after Agustín gets back. And it will be easier when the days are shorter – the darkness will help your friend get away.’

‘His name’s Bernie – Bernie. Why can’t you use his name?’

‘Of course, Bernie, yes.’

She thought carefully. ‘How will he get from the camp to Cuenca? He’ll be in prison clothes.’

‘It is all rough country till the gorge at Cuenca, plenty of cover. And there is a place in Cuenca where you can meet him. Agustín will arrange it all.’

‘How far is the camp from Cuenca?’

‘About eight kilometres. Señora, your Bernie is as strong as anyone in the camp. They are used to hard work and long walks in the winter. He will make it.’

‘What does Bernie know? Does – does he know I’m trying to help him?’

‘Nothing yet. It is safer that way. Agustín has told him only that there may be better times ahead for him. He keeps an eye on him.’

‘He won’t be able to keep an eye on him in Sevilla.’

‘That is unavoidable. I am sorry, but we can do nothing.’

‘All right.’ She sighed and ran her hand over her face. How could she get through the next weeks?

‘It is arranged now, señora.’ Luis looked at her meaningfully. ‘We agreed I would have half when it was arranged.’

Barbara shook her head. ‘Not quite, Luis. I said I’d pay you half when we had a plan in place. That means, when I know how and when it will happen.’

She saw a glint of anger in his eyes. ‘My brother will have to be struck hard on the head by your friend for them to believe his story. Then he will have to stay out in the Tierra Muerta, perhaps for hours, to give him a chance to escape. There is already snow on the tops of the sierras.’

Barbara stared him down. ‘When I have a date, Luis. A date.’

‘But—’

He broke off. Two civiles had entered the cafe, their bicorn hats and short capes glistening like insect carapaces. Guns were visible in the yellow holsters at their belts. They walked over to the bar.

‘¡Mierda!’ Luis muttered. He began to get up, but Barbara put a hand on his arm.

‘Sit down. What will they think if we run off as soon as they appear?’

He sat down again. The old woman served the civiles, remarking how cold the weather was.

‘Too cold to go straight home after duty, señora.’ They took their coffees and sat down. One looked curiously at Barbara, then muttered something to his colleague. They laughed.

‘Come on, señora, let us go now.’ Luis was twitching with anxiety.

‘All right. But slowly.’ They rose and went out. Both exhaled with relief as the door shut behind them.

‘I am disappointed about the money, señora,’ Luis said sulkily. ‘Some things are outside my control.’

Has he moved lodgings on the strength of the money, she wondered. Too bad. ‘When I have a date, you’ll have the money.’

Luis shrugged angrily. ‘I will go to Cuenca again this weekend, see Agustín before he goes to Sevilla. We can meet again a week today.’ Then to her surprise he shook her hand again with that stiff formality of his before turning and disappearing into the grey afternoon. Weeks more, Barbara thought, weeks more of this. She clenched her hands. As she walked away she avoided looking at the civiles through the window, but she saw the old couple looking down at their coffee cups, giving the civiles frightened glances. They were afraid of them, too; they weren’t watchers.

Chapter Twenty-Five

ALREADY THE FIRST SNOW had fallen on the peaks of the Sierra Valdemeca far to the north-east. That morning for the first time there was a white crust of frost in the camp yard, a skin of ice on the little puddles. The early sun turned the snow on the distant mountains a gentle pink and Bernie thought it was beautiful even as he shivered in his thin boiler suit on the parade ground, waiting for Aranda to take the morning roll.

Beside him Vicente blew his nose on his sleeve, wincing as he looked at a streak of bright yellow snot. There was something wrong with his nose now; he had agonizing pains in his head and this ugly discharge that would not stop.

Aranda appeared from his hut in greatcoat and gloves. He strode towards the platform. He removed his gloves and blew on his hands, glaring at the prisoners. An icy breeze blew down from the sierras, ruffling the prisoners’ hair with harsh fingers as Aranda called out the names in his ringing voice. There were half a dozen new men: Republicans who had fled to France when Franco won and been sent back by the Nazis. They surveyed their new prison without interest. One of them had said the Catalan leader, Companys, had been sent back to Madrid and shot.

At breakfast in the dining hut Bernie took a seat with some of the Communists. Pablo the ex-miner from Asturias moved along the bench for him. ‘Buenos días, compañero. ¿Hoy hace frío, no?’

‘Very cold. It’s come early this winter.’

Bernie spooned up the thin chickpea gruel. Down the table, Establo glanced at him. His scabies was getting worse, his face pitted with red streaks where he had been scratching. A patch of hard red skin on his wrist showed the disease was reaching the crusted stage, alive with eggs and mites underneath.

‘Compadre Piper, you have decided to join us today.’

‘You know I like to move around, compadre, you get more news that way.’

Establo fixed him with keen, hard grey eyes. ‘And what news have you been gathering?’

‘One of the guards told Guillermo the stone from the quarry is for a monument Franco’s started in the Guadarrama. Apparently it’s going to be his tomb; it’ll take twenty years to build.’

‘If it’s in the Guadarrama,’ Establo grunted, ‘why do they want limestone from here?’

‘Suitable for the monumental fittings, Guillermo said.’

Establo grunted. ‘Sounds like propaganda to me. The guards sow these stories to make us believe Franco will be there for ever. You should analyse what you hear, compadre.’

‘I always do, compadre Establo.’ Bernie looked back at him steadily. With his domed bald head and the thin wattles on his neck, Establo reminded him of the lizards you saw in summer, scuttling over the rocks. Establo smiled coldly.

‘I hope you analyse particularly what the bourgeois Vicente tells you.’

‘I do. And he analyses what I tell him.’

‘Still on the quarry detail?’ Pablo asked, changing the subject.

‘All this week. I’d rather be on the cookhouse with you.’

The guard blew his whistle. ‘Come on, finish up. Time for work!’

Bernie spooned down a last mouthful and rose. Establo was scratching the crusted skin on his wrist, his mouth twisted with pain.

THE PRISONERS assembled in long lines in the yard. The sun was above the bare brown hills now and it was a little warmer, the ice in the puddles starting to melt. The gates were opened and Bernie’s party stepped out, standing in a long file as guards with rifles took up positions every few yards. Sergeant Ramirez walked slowly down the length of the crocodile, his face sullen, staring at the prisoners. He was a fat man in his fifties with a straggling grey moustache, a red face and a drunk’s bulbous nose. He looked decrepit but he was dangerous, a churning volcano of hatreds. He was an old professional soldier and they tended to be the cruel ones, the conscripts generally preferring a quiet life. Under his greatcoat the bulge where his whip was tucked into his belt was visible. He reached the head of the queue, blew his whistle, and the prisoners set off into the hills.

It was a three-mile walk. The Tierra Muerta was well named; it was bare and stony, a few fields sheltered by dwarf oaks scraped into hollows between the hills. They passed a peasant family labouring with an ox-plough at the stony soil. They did not look up as the crocodile passed; it was a convention that the prisoners were invisible.

A little further on they crested a hill and Ramirez blew his whistle for a five-minute rest. Vicente lowered himself on to a boulder. His face was pale and his breath came in jagged rasps. Bernie glanced at the nearest guard and was surprised to see it was Agustín, the man who had made that strange remark after his visit to the psychiatrist the week before.

‘I am bad today, Bernardo,’ Vicente said. ‘My head feels as if it will explode.’

‘Molina will be back next week – he’ll let you have it easy.’ He leaned closer. ‘We’ll work together, you can rest.’

‘You’re good to an old bourgeois,’ the lawyer said with an effort at humour. He was sweating, moisture standing out on his wrinkled brow. ‘I begin to wonder, what’s the point of battling on? The Fascists will kill us all in the end. That’s what they want, to work us to death.’

‘They’ll be beaten yet. We have to hold on.’

‘They’ve won everywhere. Here, Poland, France. England will be next. And Stalin has made his non-aggression pact with Hitler because he is so afraid.’

‘Comrade Stalin made his pact with Hitler to buy time.’ It was what Establo had said when the guards told them of the Nazi–Soviet pact. Bernie couldn’t swallow the idea that this war against fascism had now to be called a war between imperialist powers. That was when he had doubted the party line for the first time.

‘Comrade Stalin.’ Vicente laughed, a hollow laugh that turned into a cough.

Far away, where the Tierra Muerta sloped down into the hazy distance, Bernie saw an extraordinary thing. Above a layer of white mist was a cliff and set into its side were houses, sunlight sparkling on their windows. They seemed close, floating on the mist itself. It was a trick the light played here sometimes, like a mirage in the desert. Bernie nudged Vicente. ‘Look there, amigo, is that not a sight worth staying alive for? You don’t often get such a view as that.’

Vicente peered into the distance. ‘I can’t see, I haven’t my glasses. Can you see Cuenca today?’

‘You can see the hanging houses themselves; they look as if they’re riding on the mist from the gorge.’ Bernie sighed. ‘It’s like looking into another world.’

Ahead, Ramirez blew his whistle. ‘Move it!’ Agustín called. Bernie helped Vicente to his feet. As they moved on Agustín fell into step with them. Bernie saw the man was studying him, though pretending not to. He wondered if he was after his arse; such things happened in the camp.

The quarry was a great round gash carved into the side of the hill. For the last few weeks they had worked here every day, hacking out lumps of limestone and breaking them into smaller chunks that were taken away in lorries. Bernie wondered if the story about Franco’s monument was true; sometimes, like Vicente, he wondered whether the quarrying was just an excuse to have them worked slowly to death in this wilderness.

Agustín and another guard built a fire outside the lean-to hut that had been erected at the front of the quarry but Ramirez didn’t head for the warmth as Molina would have done. He went and stood on a pile of stones, watching with his hands behind his back as one of the guards set up the sub-machine gun. Other guards distributed picks and spades from the lean-to. There was no chance of the prisoners using the tools as weapons and charging them – the machine gun would have cut them down in a minute.

Bernie and Vicente found a heap of limestone blocks to work on, partly hidden by a projecting rock buttress. Bernie set to work with his pick, letting Vicente sort the broken rocks into smaller pieces at a snail’s pace. They would work here, with only a short midday break for food and water, till sunset. At least now the days were getting shorter; in summer a work day lasted thirteen hours. The clang and crack of stone against metal sounded all around.

An hour later Vicente stumbled and sat down heavily. He blew his nose again, smearing his sleeve with a thin trail of the pus-like discharge, and groaned with pain. ‘I can’t go on,’ he said. ‘Call the guard.’

‘Just rest for a bit.’

‘It’s too dangerous, Bernardo. You’re supposed to call the guards if someone’s ill.’

‘Shut your bourgeois mouth.’

Vicente sat, his breath coming in gasps. Bernie worked on, listening for a footfall behind the buttress. His feet hurt in his cracked old boots and he had reached the first stage of the day’s thirst, his tongue ceaselessly moving round his mouth in search of moisture.

The soldier appeared without warning, coming round the stone buttress too quickly for Bernie to call Vicente to his feet. It was Rodolfo, a grizzled veteran of the Moroccan wars.

‘What are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘You! Get up!’

Vicente hauled himself shakily to his feet. Rodolfo rounded on Bernie.

‘Why are you allowing this man to shirk? This is sabotage!’

‘He was taken ill, señor cabo. I was about to call for you.’

Rodolfo pulled his whistle from his pocket and blew it fiercely. Vicente’s shoulders slumped in despair.

There was a crunch of booted feet and Ramirez appeared. A moment later Agustín ran up behind him. Ramirez glowered at Vicente and Bernie.

‘What the fuck is happening?’

Rodolfo’s arm snapped out in the Fascist salute. ‘I caught the abogado sitting doing nothing,’ he said. ‘The inglés stood by watching.’

‘Please, señor sargento,’ Vicente said. ‘I felt unwell. Piper was about to call the guard.’

‘You felt unwell, did you?’ Ramirez’s eyes bulged with anger. He slapped Vicente hard across the face with his gloved hand. The sound echoed across the quarry like a rifle shot, and the lawyer went down in a heap. Ramirez turned to Bernie.

‘You were letting him slack, weren’t you? Communist English bastard.’ He stepped closer. ‘You’re one of those who’s not beaten inside your head, aren’t you? I think you need a day on the cross.’ He turned to Rodolfo, who smiled and nodded grimly. Bernie set his lips. He thought of what a stretching would do to his old shoulder wound – it ached badly enough after a day out here. He looked into Ramirez’s eyes. Something in his look must have angered the captain. Faster than the eye could follow he pulled out his whip and lashed Bernie across the neck. Bernie cried out and staggered, blood welling up between his fingers.

Agustín stepped forward and nervously touched Ramirez’s arm. ‘Señor sargento.’ Ramirez looked round impatiently.

‘What?’

Agustín swallowed. ‘Señor, the psychiatrist is studying this man. I – I do not think the comandante would want him harmed.’

Ramirez frowned. ‘Are you sure? This one?’ ‘

Por cierto, sargento.’

Ramirez pursed his lips like a child deprived of a treat. He nodded reluctantly.

‘Very well.’ He leaned over Bernie, hot breath rancid with garlic blasting into his face. ‘Take that as a warning. And you – ’ he gestured to Vicente – ‘get back to work.’

He marched away, Rodolfo following. Agustín scurried after them; he did not look at Bernie.

THAT EVENING, as the men lay on their bunks waiting for lights out, Vicente turned to Bernie. The lawyer had slept most of the evening.

‘Better?’ Bernie asked.

Vicente sighed. ‘I have rested at least.’ His face was drawn and seamed in the dim candlelight. ‘You?’

Bernie lightly touched the long cut on his neck. He had bathed it, he hoped it would not become infected. ‘I’ll be all right.’

‘What happened this morning?’ Vicente whispered. ‘Why did they let you go?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve been trying to work it out all day.’ Ramirez’s leniency was the talk of the camp; at supper Establo had asked him about it suspiciously. ‘Agustín said I was under the psychiatrist, but the psychiatrist wouldn’t care what state I was in.’

‘Maybe Agustín wants you in his bed.’

‘I wondered that but I don’t think so. He doesn’t look at me in that way.’

‘Someone looked at me as we came in,’ Vicente said quietly. ‘I saw him.’

‘Father Eduardo? Yes, I saw too.’

Bernie had had to help the lawyer on the last part of the evening journey back from the quarry, supporting him as he walked. As they crossed the yard he had seen the young priest come out of the classroom hut. He had paused and followed them with his eyes as they hobbled to their hut. ‘He has me marked down now,’ Vicente said. ‘For him I would be a good prize.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

SANDY’S OFFICE was in a shabby square full of shops and little warehouses advertising bankrupt stock. It was raining, a cold thin rain. An old newspaper seller watched Harry lugubriously from the shelter of his kiosk as he crossed the square. On the other side some men unloading boxes from a cart looked at him curiously. So far as Harry knew no one was following him now, but he felt exposed nonetheless.

A line of electric bells was set into the lintel of a heavy, unpainted wooden door. A steel plaque beside the top one read ‘Nuevas Iniciativas’. Harry rang and waited.

Sandy had telephoned him at the embassy. ‘Sorry to have taken so long, but about this business opportunity – can we meet, at my office, not the cafe? I’ve got some things to show you. Barbara will be joining us afterwards for coffee.’

Harry had met with Tolhurst and Hillgarth in Tolhurst’s office that morning for a briefing. Hillgarth was in a good mood, his saturnine face relaxed, self-satisfied.

‘Could this be the gold?’ he asked, his eyes dancing.

‘He’s been very cagey about that,’ Harry replied cautiously.

Hillgarth ran a finger down the crease of his trousers, frowning thoughtfully. ‘We hear Franco’s trying to negotiate supplies of food from the Argentines. They’ll want paying, eh, Tolly?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hillgarth nodded and leaned back in his chair. ‘Whatever he’s offering, I think you should take the bait.’ He laughed softly. ‘No, that’s not quite right, you’re the bait and he’s the fish. OK, Tolly. The money.’

Tolhurst opened a folder and looked earnestly at Harry. ‘You’re authorized to offer to invest up to two thousand pounds in any relevant business proposal of Forsyth’s. If he asks for more, you can come back to us. We’ll provide the money, but you should show Forsyth your own bank book showing you’ve got funds.’

‘I’ve got it here.’ Harry passed over the little cardboard book. Hillgarth studied it carefully.

‘It’s a lot of money.’

‘I got my parents’ capital when I was twenty-one. I don’t spend much.’

‘You ought to live a little. When I was your age I was running a tin mine in Bolivia – what I wouldn’t have given then for five thousand pounds.’

‘Useful that Brett kept it,’ Tolhurst said. ‘London doesn’t like fake bank books.’

Hillgarth’s large brown eyes were still fixed on Harry. He shifted a little, remembering he hadn’t told them about Enrique. It was stupid and stubborn but he hadn’t. What harm could it do?

‘Maestre tells me his daughter’s heartbroken you haven’t been in touch since you went to the Prado,’ Hillgarth said.

Harry hesitated, then said, ‘I’d rather not see her again, frankly.’

Hillgarth lit a Gold Flake, studying Harry over his lighter. ‘Nice little señorita, I’m surprised at you.’

‘She’s hardly more than a child.’

‘Pity. Could be useful diplomatically.’

Harry didn’t reply. He was lying to Sandy and Barbara, wasn’t that enough deception without adding Milagros?

‘I suppose some would say you’re an ideal agent, Brett,’ Hillgarth said musingly. ‘Incorruptible. You don’t chase women, you’re not interested in money. You don’t even drink much, do you?’

‘We had a few the other night,’ Tolhurst said cheerfully.

‘Only most agents are corruptible. They want something, even if it’s only excitement. But you don’t go for that either, do you?’

‘I’m doing this for my country,’ Harry said. He knew he sounded stiff and pompous but he didn’t care. ‘Because I was told it’d help the war effort. It’s another form of soldiering.’

Hillgarth nodded slowly. ‘All right, that’s good. Loyalty.’ He considered. ‘How much would you do, for loyalty?’

Harry hesitated, but Hillgarth’s contemptuous manner had angered him and that made him bold. ‘I don’t know, sir, it would depend what I was asked.’

Hillgarth nodded. ‘But there may be limits?’

‘It would depend what I was asked,’ he repeated.

‘I doubt Forsyth has limits. What do you think?’

‘Sandy only lets you see what he wants you to see. I don’t really know what he could be capable of.’ He paused. ‘Probably just about anything.’ Like you, he thought.

‘Well, we’ll see.’ Hillgarth leaned back. ‘As for today, see what he’s offering, say you’ll go in with him and then report back.’

‘But don’t jump at it, Harry,’ Tolhurst added. ‘Appear doubtful, worried about your money. Say you need to know everything before you commit yourself.’

‘Yes,’ Hillgarth agreed. ‘That’s the line to take. That way he’ll show you more.’

A PLUMP WOMAN in her fifties with a lined face and grey hair tied in a bun answered the door. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

‘I’ve an appointment with Señor Forsyth. Señor Brett.’

She led him up a narrow flight of stairs into a little office where a typewriter stood on a battered desk. She knocked on a door and Sandy emerged, smiling broadly. He wore a pinstripe business suit, a red handkerchief in his breast pocket.

‘Harry! Welcome to Nuevas Iniciativas.’ He smiled at the secretary, who blushed unexpectedly. ‘I see you’ve met Maria, she brews the best tea in Madrid. Two teas and two coffees, Maria.’ The secretary bustled away.

‘Come in.’ Sandy ushered Harry into a surprisingly large room. A big table cluttered with maps and papers took up one wall. Harry was surprised to see several gleaming metal canisters, like big thermos flasks, piled there too. Above the table was a reproduction of a nineteeth-century painting. A tropical sea teemed with savage life, giant reptiles seizing one another in bloody jaws as pterodactyls wheeled in the sky above. Opposite, behind a large oak desk, two men in suits sat smoking.

‘Sebastian de Salas of course you know,’ Sandy said.

‘Buenas tardes.’ De Salas rose and bowed, shaking Harry’s hand. The other man was small and sallow, dressed in an ill-fitting suit. In contrast to de Salas’s sharp neatness, he looked like a dowdy clerk.

‘Alberto Otero, the brains of our outfit.’ Otero rose briefly, shaking Harry’s hand with a moist grip. He didn’t smile, studying him expressionlessly.

‘I see you noticed my picture,’ Sandy said. ‘“Ancient Dorsetshire” by Henry de la Beche. Painted in 1830, when people were first learning about dinosaurs.’

‘It is all wrong, of course,’ Otero said severely. ‘The animals are grossly exaggerated.’

‘Yes, Alberto. But imagine what people must have thought when they realized their nice English landscape had once been full of giant reptiles.’ Forsyth smiled and sat down next to de Salas. Sitting facing them, Harry realized all three wore identical narrow moustaches, the badge of the Falange.

Sandy leaned back, folding his arms over his stomach. ‘Now then, Harry, you’ve got some money to invest and we’ve got a project that could do with further capital. Alberto, though, he wants to know a bit more about the funds available.’ He winked. ‘Cautious, these Spaniards. Quite right too, of course.’

‘I’ve a fair bit of money in the bank,’ Harry said. ‘Though I wouldn’t want to put too much in one project.’

De Salas nodded but Otero’s face remained expressionless. ‘Might I ask where this has come from?’ he asked. ‘I do not want to seem impertinent, but we should know.’

‘Certainly. It’s the capital from my parents’ estate. They died when I was a child.’

‘Harry’s an old sobersides,’ Sandy said. ‘Doesn’t spend much.’

‘Where is the money now?’

‘In my bank in England.’ Harry produced the bank book. ‘Have a look, I don’t mind. I thought you might want to see.’

Otero studied the book. ‘What about currency restrictions?’

‘Don’t apply,’ Sandy said. ‘Embassy staff. Isn’t that right, Harry?’

‘I’m allowed to invest in a neutral country.’

De Salas smiled. ‘And you would not mind investing here? I’m thinking of the political situation. We rather disagreed on that topic when last we met.’

‘I support my country against Germany. I’ve no quarrel with Spain. It has to make its own future. As you said.’

‘When there is money to be made, eh, señor?’ Sebastian gave Harry a smile; conspiratorial but slightly contemptuous as well.

‘What if Spain comes into the war?’ Otero asked. ‘If nothing else, that would freeze any British investments here.’

‘They seem pretty confident at the embassy Franco won’t come in,’ Harry said. ‘Confident enough for me to take the risk.’

Otero nodded slowly. ‘How good is your information? Is this the ambassador’s thinking?’

Knowledge like that really would be worth money, Harry knew. ‘I just hear what the other translators say. Of course I’ve no access to any secret material.’ He let a haughty note enter his voice. ‘And I wouldn’t dream of breathing a word of it if I did. I only know what people say generally; the Spanish messenger boys probably know as much.’

Sebastian raised a hand. ‘Of course, Señor Brett. Forgive my curiosity.’

‘Harry’s loyal to the King,’ Sandy said with a smile. Otero looked at him keenly.

‘If we are to tell you about this venture of ours, you would have to keep it entirely confidential.’

‘Of course.’

‘We would not want it repeated anywhere else. Especially not at the embassy. They might be interested, perhaps?’

‘I don’t see why,’ Harry said, looking naive. ‘If it’s just a business venture.’ He put on a worried look. ‘It’s nothing illegal, is it?’

Otero smiled. ‘Far from it. But it is a matter that could excite – considerable interest.’

‘Of course I won’t say anything to anyone.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘I promise.’

‘Not even Barbara,’ Sandy added. ‘Honour bright, eh?’

‘Of course.’

Sebastian de Salas smiled. ‘Sandy has told us of the honour between public-school friends. It is a code, yes?’

‘One Harry would never break,’ Sandy added.

‘A code of honour, like that among soldiers of the legion?’

‘Yes,’ Harry replied. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

Otero studied Harry a moment longer, then turned to Sandy. ‘Very well. But on your responsibility, Forsyth.’

‘I vouch for Harry,’ Sandy said with a smile.

‘How much would you consider investing?’ Otero asked Harry.

‘It depends. It depends what’s on offer.’

There was a tap at the door and Maria brought in a tray. She poured tea and coffee for them. In the silence Harry felt an unexpected clutch of fear. He was conscious his armpits were soggy with sweat. It was hard with three of them all concentrating on him. The secretary left, closing the door quietly.

‘OK.’ Sandy opened a drawer in his desk. Everyone watched as he brought out a glass phial filled with yellow dust. He took a sheet of paper and carefully poured a little out.

‘There. What d’you think that is? Go on, pick it up.’

Harry ran the dust between his fingers. He knew what it was but pretended innocence. ‘It feels oily.’

Otero gave a barking laugh and shook his head. Sandy smiled broadly.

‘It’s gold, Harry. Spanish gold. It came out of a field some way from here. Alberto’s been pottering about that neck of the woods for years, taking samples, and this spring he hit the jackpot. Spain has some small gold deposits but this one’s big. Very big.’

Harry let the grains fall back on the paper. ‘Is this how gold looks when it comes out of the ground?’

Otero rose and went over to the big table. He brought one of the canisters over to the desk and twisted off the top. It was full of a crumbly yellow-orange soil.

‘This is the ore. You apply mercury and acid to separate the gold. Two canisters like this would produce about what’s in that phial; the gold content is very high. Can you imagine how much a whole field of that ore would be worth? Twenty fields?’

Harry poked the crumbly earth gently. This is it, he thought. I’ve bloody done it.

‘These canisters go to the Ministry of Mines for assay.’ Sandy turned to de Salas. ‘That’s where Sebastian works, he’s our contact there.’

De Salas nodded. ‘Spain’s economic policy is based on self-sufficiency, Señor Brett, as you know. Mineral exploitation is a priority. The Ministry of Mines grants licences to private companies to explore sites. Then if workable mineral deposits are found and the government laboratories are happy with the assay, the company receives a licence to develop.’

‘And its shares go up,’ Sandy added.

‘And this is what Nuevas Iniciativas does?’

‘That’s right. We three are the principal shareholders. Sebastian shouldn’t be a member, technically, as he’s a Ministry of Mines official, but no one bothers about that sort of thing here. And he’s got some colleagues to invest.’

‘Are they happy with your ore?’

‘There have been delays,’ de Salas replied. ‘Unfortunately politics are involved. Do you know about the Badajoz fiasco?’

‘I heard something.’

Sandy nodded. ‘Huge gold deposits were reported last year, but it turned out there was nothing there. After the Generalísimo told the country in his Christmas broadcast that Spain would soon have all the gold it needed.’ Sandy smiled sadly. ‘It was embarrassing – like that Austrian scientist Franco funded, who claimed to be able to manufacture petrol from grass. The Generalísimo was so desperate for these things that he became, shall we say, a little credulous. Now he’s gone to the other extreme, become overcautious. There’s a committee that studies all claims of substantial mineral deposits. The people on it are, well, not sympathetic politically to the Ministry of Mines. They see us as a Falange nest.’

‘But if there are genuine resources, surely it’s in everyone’s interest to develop them?’

‘So you’d think, Harry,’ Sandy agreed. ‘So you’d think.’

Otero shrugged. ‘Certain people are dragging things out, ordering further assays, though enough tests have been carried out to satisfy any reasonable customer. Tests on samples taken from the site in front of government inspectors.’

‘We may be able to show you those reports,’ Sandy said. ‘On a strictly confidential basis, of course.’

‘I don’t mind tests,’ Otero continued. ‘In fact, in the meantime I’ve been surveying neighbouring areas and they show even better potential. When we are past these bureaucratic hurdles and it is all public, everyone associated with this company is going to become very rich. But it all costs money, señor. Taking samples, making tests – and there is a neighbouring piece of land we want. The price is more than we can afford right now.’

‘It’s not just politics,’ de Salas added. ‘Those generals on the committee would like to run us out of money by demanding test after test, drive us to a position where we have to sell out to another exploration company. One controlled by them.’

‘Always comes down to filthy lucre.’ Sandy raised his eyebrows. ‘Five hundred pounds, say, could be very useful to us now. It could fund more drilling, sample preparation, and the purchase of rights on this new land. If they saw we’d got real financial resources I think the obstructiveness would fall away. Then we’d all be in for a packet.’

‘Five hundred?’ Harry said. ‘That’s a lot. It seems a bit – speculative.’

‘It is not speculative,’ Otero said frostily. ‘I said, we have reports verifying the quality of our ore.’

Harry pretended to consider, pursing his lips. His heart was beating fast but he wasn’t afraid any more, he scented success.

‘These reports, are they in layman’s language?’

‘Of course.’ De Salas laughed. ‘They have to be understood by the committee.’

‘You’d have to come here and read them,’ Sandy said. ‘We couldn’t let them out of the office. But we’d take you through them.’

‘You are privileged, Señor Brett,’ Otero said seriously. ‘Very few people know about this.’

Harry took a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. ‘I’d want to see the site. I wouldn’t want to go in blind.’

Otero shook his head slowly. ‘Its location is very confidential information, señor. I am not prepared to go that far, no.’

‘The government must know where it is, surely?’

‘Yes, Harry.’ Sandy’s voice was suddenly impatient. ‘But only on the basis of guaranteed confidentiality.’

‘It’s just, if I’m to be part of this…’ Harry spread his hands.

‘We’ll have to discuss that.’ Sandy stroked his moustache, looking between de Salas and Otero. Both looked unhappy.

‘All right,’ Harry said. There was no point in pressing further now. He felt pleasure at having stirred them to obvious anxiety. That had knocked the complacent smile off Sandy’s face. If they refused to show him he would go in with them anyway, but to see the site would be a real coup.

There was a tap on the door. Sandy looked up, still irritable, as Maria put her head through.

‘What is it?’

‘Señora Forsyth has arrived, sir. She’s outside.’

Sandy ran a hand through his hair. ‘She’s early. Look, Harry, we’ll need to discuss this. Why don’t you take Barbara for that coffee on your own? We’ll ring you later.’

‘As you like.’

‘OK. I’ll come out with you, say hello.’ Sandy rose; the Spaniards did too.

‘Then, until we meet again.’ Sebastian shook his hand, followed by Otero, who gave him another hard stare. Sandy ushered him out. Barbara was sitting by Maria’s desk, in a patterned headscarf slick with rain. She looked pale and preoccupied.

‘Hello, Harry.’

‘You’re early!’ Sandy gestured impatiently at the scarf. ‘And what are you wearing that for? You’ve enough hats.’

Harry stared at him, surprised by his tone. Catching his look, Sandy smiled and took Barbara’s arm. ‘Look, darling, change of plan. We’ve had a meeting, there’s something I need to discuss with some friends. Why don’t you and Harry go for a coffee on your own?’

‘Yes, all right.’ She gave Harry a quick smile.

‘He’ll take you home afterwards, won’t you, Harry? Good man. I’ll ring tomorrow.’ He winked. ‘I’ll see what I can do with Otero.’

Outside the rain was still falling steadily, chill and dank. Barbara adjusted her headscarf.

‘He doesn’t like me wearing these,’ she said. ‘Thinks they’re common.’ She gave a tight cold smile, an expression Harry had never seen on her face before. ‘What have you been up to – is he trying to rope you into one of his schemes?’

Harry laughed awkwardly. ‘There is an investment possibility.’

‘Look, d’you mind if we don’t go for coffee? I’d rather get home, I think I’ve a cold coming.’

‘Of course.’ They walked on slowly. He looked at her pale set face. ‘Are you all right, Barbara?’

‘No, not really.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I went to a cinema after lunch, to pass the time till I met you. They had the newsreel, you know what they’re like, pro-German propaganda.’ She gave a shuddering sigh. ‘There was an item about the bombing, “Britain on its Knees”. They showed the centre of Birmingham.’

‘I’m sorry. Was it bad?’

‘Awful. Parts of the city were on fire. All those people killed in the last big raid and they were gloating.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, I feel faint.’

Harry looked around for a cafe but there were none in view, only one of the large city churches. He took her arm. ‘Come on, let’s go and sit down in there.’ He led her up the steps.

The church interior was cold and gloomy, only the ornate gold-covered altar was lit. Along the shadowy benches a few dim figures sat huddled, some murmuring softly. Harry led Barbara to an empty bench. There were tears on her cheeks. She took off her glasses, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘I understand. I worry about my cousin Will.’

‘He’s the one whose wife’s a bit of a dragon?’

‘Yes. Though I saw another side to her just before I came out. We were caught in a raid, I had to get her to a shelter. She was terrified for her children. I didn’t think she loved them, but she does.’

Barbara sighed. ‘I saw raids here, of course, during the Civil War, but to see it in England—’ She bit her lip. Things will never be the same after this, will they? Anywhere?’

Harry looked at her earnest face, pale in the gloom. ‘No. I don’t think they will.’

‘I feel I should be there. England. I wanted security once, after Bernie – ’ she paused – ‘after he went. Sandy gave me that, or I thought he did. But there’s no security anywhere, not now.’ She paused again. ‘I’m not sure I even want it any more.’

Harry smiled sadly. ‘I still do, I’m afraid. I’m not a hero. If I’m honest what I’d really like is to scuttle home and have a quiet life.’

‘But you won’t, will you?’ She smiled at him. ‘That would go against your sense of honour.’

‘Funny, that word came up in the talk I’ve just been having with Sandy. Public-school honour. Of course, it never meant anything to him.’

They were silent a moment. Their eyes had adjusted to the gloom and Harry saw most of the people praying were poor women in black. Some had only scraps of black rag to cover their heads. Barbara looked at the figure of Jesus on the Cross in a side chapel, painted blood running from his wounds.

‘What a religion,’ she said bitterly. ‘Blood and torture, no wonder the Spaniards ended up massacring one another. Religion’s a curse, Sandy’s right about that.’

‘I used to think it held people’s excesses in check.’

Barbara gave a bitter laugh. ‘It does the opposite here, I think it always has.’ She replaced her glasses. ‘Do you remember that family Bernie was friendly with? The Meras?’

‘Yes, I was with him when he first met Pedro Mera. In fact, I went – I went to see if I could find their flat.’ He hesitated, he didn’t want to tell Barbara what he had found in Carabanchel.

‘Did you?’

‘Yes. Why – have you seen them?’ His face was eager.

Barbara bit her lip. ‘You know I’m doing voluntary work at a church orphanage?’ she said quietly.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a hell hole. They treat the children like animals. That little daughter of Pedro and Inés, Carmela, she was brought in two days ago. She’d been living wild. I think the others are all dead.’

‘Oh God.’ Harry remembered the little girl looking solemnly at him as he tried to teach her English words. Her brother Antonio who had watched the Communists chasing the Fascist with him and Bernie; Pedro the big bluff father, Inés the tireless mother. ‘All of them?’

‘I think so.’ Barbara reached into her bag and pulled out the ragged woollen donkey, sewn up round the middle. ‘The old bitch who works with me pulled this out of the child’s hand and tore it. I think it was the last possession Carmela had. I promised I’d mend it but when I took it back this morning they said she kept trying to escape so she’d been moved to a special home for recalcitrant children. You can imagine what that means. The nun in charge wouldn’t tell me where it was, said it wasn’t my concern. Sister Inmaculada.’ There was a savage bitterness in her tone.

‘Can’t you find out?’

‘How? How can I if they won’t tell me?’ Her voice rose, then she sighed. Her mouth set. ‘I know, let’s leave Fernandito the donkey as an offering to the Lord. Maybe then he’ll take care of Carmela. Maybe.’ She got up and took the toy to the rail of the side chapel. She thrust it angrily on top of the flowers in front of the Cross, then came back and sat beside Harry.

‘I’m not going back to work at the convent. Sandy won’t like it but he’ll have to lump it.’

‘Are you and Sandy – ’ he hesitated – ‘all right?’

She smiled sadly. ‘Let’s leave that one, Harry.’ She shivered. ‘Come on, let’s get out of this mausoleum.’

He looked at her seriously. ‘Barbara, if ever you need – well – any help, you can always come to me.’

She touched his hand. An old woman walking by clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

‘Thanks, Harry. But I’m all right, I’ve just had a bad day.’ Harry saw the old woman catch the sleeve of a priest and point to them. ‘Come on,’ Barbara said. ‘We’ll get arrested for immorality on sacred premises.’

OUTSIDE, BARBARA felt angry with herself for her momentary dizziness. She had to stay strong.

After leaving the church she let Harry take her to a coffee bar. She asked what the latest word was at the embassy about Franco entering the war. Harry told her they thought Franco’s meeting with Hitler had gone badly. That was some comfort.

When she got home she made some tea and sat by herself in the kitchen, thinking and smoking. Pilar was out for the afternoon; Barbara was glad, she could never feel at ease around the girl. The weather forecast came on, the announcer promising more cold weather for Madrid and snow for the Guadarrama mountains. Barbara looked out at the rainswept garden and thought, that’ll mean snow in Cuenca too. And nothing to do now but wait for Luis’s brother to take his leave. She thought about Harry again. She wished she could have told him about Bernie, she hated letting him carry on thinking his old friend was dead and longed to tell him the truth, but he was Sandy’s friend too, and what she was thinking of doing was illegal. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t safe to tell a soul.

After a while she went into the salón and wrote a letter to Sister Inmaculada, telling her in coldly polite tones that domestic commitments meant she couldn’t work at the orphanage any more. She was just finishing as Sandy came in. He looked tired. He smiled as he put down his briefcase. It made a chinking sound, as though it contained something metal. He came over and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘How are you, darling? Listen, I’m sorry I was bad-tempered at the office. I’ve had a hard day. Been at the Jews’ Committee for the last hour.’ He leaned over and kissed her neck. Once that would have melted her, now she was conscious only of the tickling hairs of his moustache. She pulled away. He frowned.

‘What’s the matter? I’ve said I’m sorry.’

‘I’ve had a bad day too.’

‘Who are you writing to?’

‘Sister Inmaculada. I’ve said I’m not going to the orphanage any more. I can’t stand how those children are treated.’

‘You haven’t said that in the letter, have you?’

‘No, Sandy, I’ve said domestic commitments. Don’t worry, there won’t be any trouble with the marquesa.’

He stepped away. ‘No need to be so snappy.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So what are you going to do with yourself now? You need something to do.’

I need a month till I can get Bernie away and escape, she thought. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I could help with your refugees? The Jews?’

Sandy took a sip of whisky. He shook his head. ‘I’ve just been meeting some of them. They’re very traditional. Don’t like being told what to do by women.’

‘I thought they were mostly professional people.’

‘They’re still very traditional.’ He changed the subject. ‘What did Harry have to say for himself?’

‘We talked about the war. He doesn’t think Franco will come in.’

‘Yes, that’s what he told me. You know, he’s quite shrewd when it comes to business.’ He smiled reflectively. ‘More than I’d have expected.’ He looked at her again. ‘Look, lovey, I think you’re making a mistake about the orphanage. You have to do things their way. When in Rome – I’ve said that often enough.’

‘Yes, you have. But I’m not going back there, Sandy, I won’t be part of how those children are treated.’ Why did he always seem to provoke her to anger these days, just when she needed to keep things normal, on an even keel? Barbara knew he had noticed something was wrong. She even avoided love-making now, and when he persisted and she gave in, she couldn’t fake pleasure.

‘Those children are wild,’ Sandy said. ‘You’ve said so yourself. They need disciplining, not toy animals.’

‘God, Sandy, sometimes I think you’ve got a stone instead of a heart.’ The words came out before she could stop herself.

He flushed angrily and took a step towards her. His fists were clenched and Barbara flinched, heart thudding. She had always known he could be cruel, venomous when he was crossed, but until now she had never feared violence from him. She drew a sharp breath. Sandy checked himself and spoke coldly.

‘I made you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you forget it. You were nothing when I met you, a mess, because all you’ve ever cared about is what people think of you. All you’ve got for a heart is sentimental mush.’ He glared at her furiously and she saw clearly, for the first time, what he had always wanted from her, what their relationship had been about from the start. Control. Power.

She got up and walked out of the room.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

WHEN HARRY RETURNED home after leaving Barbara he found two letters waiting for him. One was a hand-delivered scribbled note from Sandy. It said he had persuaded Otero and de Salas to let him visit the mine, and that he would collect Harry early on Sunday, in three days’ time, and drive him there. It was only a few hours’ journey, he said.

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.

Dear Señor Brett,

I enclose the bill from the doctor. I know his charges are reasonable. Enrique is better already. Soon he will be able to work again and things will be easier for all of us. He sends his thanks, as does Mama. You saved Enrique’s life and we will always remember what you did with gratitude.

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.

I am so glad Enrique is better and I shall pay the doctor’s bill tomorrow morning. I would like to meet you to give you the receipt and also to buy you coffee. I enjoyed our talk and I meet few Spanish people informally. I hope you will feel able to come.

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.’

NEXT 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?’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

IT 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.

As the dust subsided they saw the collapse had revealed a cave, four or five feet high, behind the rockface. The crevice evidently broadened out behind, running into the hillside. The sappers walked up to the cave. They produced torches and, crouching down, cautiously stepped in. There was a moment’s silence, then a sudden yell and the two men reappeared, running back down to the truck with terrified expressions on their faces. Prisoners and guards alike watched astonished.

The sappers spoke to Molina in low urgent tones. The fat sergeant laughed.

‘¿Qué diceis? ¡No es posible! ¡Estáis loco!’

‘It’s true! It’s true! Go and see!’

Molina frowned, evidently nonplussed, then led the sappers over to where Bernie and the others stood. The sergeant nodded at Vicente and he stood up groggily.

‘Ay, abogado, you are a man of learning, no? Perhaps you can make sense of this fool.’ He gestured to the nearest sapper, a thin young man with acne. ‘Tell him what you saw.’

The man swallowed. ‘In that cave, there are paintings. Men chasing animals, deer and even elephants. It is mad but we saw it!’

A flicker of interest came into Vicente’s face. ‘Where?’

‘On the wall, on the wall!’

‘Something similar was found in France a few years ago. Cave paintings by prehistoric men.’

The young soldier crossed himself. ‘It was like looking at the walls of Hell.’

Molina’s eyes lit up. ‘Could they be valuable?’

‘Only to scientists I think, sargento.’

‘May we see?’ Bernie asked. ‘I have a degree from Cambridge University,’ he added untruthfully. Molina considered a moment, then nodded. Bernie and Vicente followed him back to the cave. The sappers hung back. Molina gestured brusquely to the man who had spoken. ‘Show them.’ The man swallowed, then took his colleague’s torch and passed it to Bernie before reluctantly leading the way back to the entrance. The prisoners watched with interest.

The cave was narrow and thick with dust, making Vicente cough painfully. Ten feet in it broadened into a wide, circular cavern. Ahead, in the beams of the torches, they saw figures on the wall, stick-like men chasing huge animals, elephants with thick fur and high domed heads, rhinos, deer. Painted in bright reds and blacks, they seemed to leap and dance in the torchlight. One whole side of the cave wall was covered with them.

‘Wow,’ Bernie breathed.

‘It’s like in France,’ Vicente said quietly. ‘I saw pictures in a magazine. I had no idea the paintings could seem so – alive. You have made an important find, señor.’

‘Who painted them?’ the soldier asked nervously. ‘Why paint pictures here in the darkness?’

‘No one knows, soldado. Perhaps it was for their religious ceremonies.’

The sapper cast his torch uneasily round the cave, lighting stalagmites and bare rock. ‘But there is no way in here,’ he said uneasily.

Bernie gestured to a jumbled pile of rocks in a corner of the cave. ‘See, perhaps there was an entrance there once, and it became blocked.’

‘And these have been in darkness for thousands of years,’ Vicente whispered. ‘Older than the Catholic Church, older than Christ.’

Bernie studied the paintings. ‘They’re wonderful,’ he said. ‘It’s as though they were painted yesterday. Look, a woolly mammoth. They’re hunting mammoths.’ He laughed at the wonder of it.

‘I would like to go now.’ The sapper turned, clattering back to the entrance. Bernie cast a last beam of light over a group of sticklike men running after an immense stag, then turned away.

Outside the sapper and Vicente went to talk to Molina. A guard gestured with his rifle for Bernie to return to the prisoners, still standing in ragged lines, many shivering now in the cold damp air.

‘¿Que pasó?’ Pablo asked Bernie.

‘Cave paintings,’ he said. ‘By prehistoric men.’

‘¿De verdad? What are they like?’

‘Amazing. Thousands of years old.’

‘The time of primitive communism,’ Pablo said. ‘Before social classes formed. They should be studied.’

Vicente rejoined them, his breath rasping like sandpaper as he crossed the uneven ground.

‘What did Molina say?’ Bernie asked.

‘He’s going to report to the comandante. They’re moving us round the hill, they’re going to blast somewhere else.’ He coughed and more sweat stood out on his brow. ‘Agh, I feel as if I’m on fire. If only I had some water.’

A soldier climbed to the cave mouth. He crossed himself, then stood at the entrance, guarding it.

THAT NIGHT at supper Vicente was worse. In the dim light of the oil lamps Bernie could see he was sweating heavily, shivering. He winced at every swallow of the chickpea gruel.

‘Are you all right?’

Vicente didn’t answer. He laid down his spoon and put his head in his hands.

The door of the mess hut opened. Aranda appeared, followed by Molina. The sergeant had a hangdog look. After them came Father Jaime, tall and stern in his sotana, thick iron-grey hair swept back from his high forehead. The men at the trestle tables shifted uneasily as Aranda faced them, his expression stern.

‘Today at the quarry,’ he said in a ringing voice, ‘a discovery was made by Sergeant Molina’s detail. Father Jaime wishes to address you about it.’

The priest nodded. ‘These scribblings by cavemen on rock walls are pagan things, made before Christ’s light shone on the world. They are to be shunned and avoided. Tomorrow fresh charges will be laid in that cave and the pictures destroyed. Anyone who even mentions them will be punished. That is all.’ He nodded to Aranda, gave Molina a look of disfavour, and swept out again, followed by the officers.

Pablo leaned across to Bernie. ‘The bastard. They’re part of Spain’s heritage.’

‘These people are like the Goths and Vandals, eh, Vicente?’ Bernie nudged the lawyer.

Vicente gave a groan then slid forward, his head striking the table. His tin plate crashed to the floor, bringing a guard rushing over. It was Arias, a carelessly brutal young conscript.

‘¿Que pasa aquá?’ He shook Vicente’s shoulder. The lawyer groaned.

‘He passed out,’ Bernie said. ‘He’s ill, he needs attention.’

Arias grunted. ‘Take him to his hut. Come on, bring him. I’ll have to go out in the cold now.’ He pulled his poncho over his head as he complained.

Bernie lifted Vicente. He was light, a bag of bones. The lawyer tried to stand but his legs were shaking too much. Bernie supported him out of the mess hut, the guard following. They went across the yard, stumbling through puddles where ice was forming, glinting in the spotlights from the watchtowers.

In the hut Bernie laid Vicente on his pallet. He lay semiconscious, covered with sweat, breathing heavily. Arias studied the lawyer’s face.

‘I think it is time to call the priest for this one.’

‘No. He’s not that bad,’ Bernie said. ‘He’s been like this before.’

‘I have to call the priest if a man looks as though he is dying.’

‘He’s just ill. Call Father Jaime if you like, but you saw what mood he’s in.’

Arias hesitated. ‘All right. Leave him, come on. Back to the canteen.’

When they trooped back to the hut after the meal Vicente was awake again, though he looked worse than ever.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Did I faint?’

‘Yes. You should rest now.’

‘My head is on fire. It is full of poison.’

In the opposite bunk Establo lay watching them, his yellow scabbed face monstrous in the light of a tallow candle. He called across. ‘¡Ay, compadre! You saw the paintings, the prehistoric men. What were they like? Fine men, eh? Primitive communists.’

‘Yes, Establo, they were fine men. They were hunting furry elephants.’

Establo looked at him sharply. ‘How could elephants be furry? Do not mock me, Piper.’

NEXT DAY was Sunday. There was a compulsory service in the hut that served as a church, a white cloth placed over a trestle table for an altar. The prisoners sat through it as usual, many dozing off. Father Jaime would have told the guard to jab them awake but Father Eduardo was taking the service and he let them sleep. Jaime’s sermons were usually full of hell fire and vengeance but Eduardo spoke of Christ’s light and the joys repentance could bring, with something almost pleading in his tone. Bernie studied him carefully.

After the services the priest was available for anyone who wanted to talk. Few ever did. Bernie hung back as the prisoners filed out, then muttered to the guard. The soldier looked at him in surprise, then led him to a little room at the back of the hut.

Bernie felt embarrassed going into the priest’s room. Father Eduardo had removed his robes and was dressed once again in his black sotana. His plump face looked young, a scrubbed child’s. He smiled nervously at Bernie, gesturing to a chair before his desk.

‘Buenos días. Please sit. What is your name?’

‘Bernie Piper. Hut eight.’

The priest consulted a list. ‘Ah, yes, the Englishman. How can I help you, my son?’

‘I have a friend in my hut who is very ill. Vicente Medina.’

‘Yes, I know the man.’

‘If he could have a doctor, something might be done for him.’

The priest shook his head sadly. ‘The authorities will not allow a doctor here. I have tried, I am sorry.’

Bernie nodded. He had expected that. He went over the words he had rehearsed during the service.

‘Sir, do you believe forced conversions are wrong?’

The priest hesitated a moment. ‘Yes. The Church teaches that a conversion to Christianity that is not genuine, a form of words, has no validity.’

‘Vicente is an old Left Republican. You know they are strong atheists.’

Father Eduardo’s face set. ‘I do. My church was burned by the mob in 1931. The police were ordered to do nothing; the Left Republican Azaña said all the churches in Spain were not worth one Republican life.’

‘Vicente can do you no harm now.’ Bernie took a deep breath. ‘I want you to let him die in peace when the time comes. Don’t try and give him the last rites. With his beliefs that could only be a mockery.’

Father Eduardo sighed. ‘You think we press dying men into forced conversions?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘How bad we must seem to you.’ Father Eduardo looked at Bernie intently. His thick glasses enlarged his eyes so they seemed to be swimming behind the lenses. ‘You were not brought up a Catholic, Piper?’

‘No.’

‘You are a Communist, I see.’

‘Yes.’ Bernie paused. ‘Christians believe in forgiveness, don’t they?’

‘That is central to our faith.’

‘Then why can’t you forgive Vicente what his party may have done and leave him in peace?’

Father Eduardo raised a hand. ‘You don’t understand at all.’ His voice had that pleading note again. ‘Please try to understand. If a man dies having denied the Church he will go to Hell. But if he repents and asks forgiveness, even at the very end, after the worst life, God will forgive him. When a man is on his deathbed it is our last chance to save his soul. A man then is on the brink of eternity. Sometimes he can see his life and his sins truly for the first time, and reach out to God.’

‘A man then is at his weakest point, terrified. And you know how to use that. What if a man takes the sacrament then through sheer fear?’

‘Only God could know if he was truly contrite.’

Bernie realized he had lost. He had underestimated how deeply the priest was buried in his superstition. His natural compassion was just a flicker on the surface.

‘You’ve an answer for everything, haven’t you?’ he asked heavily. ‘Endless twisted logic?’

Father Eduardo smiled sadly. ‘I could say the same of your faith. The edifice Karl Marx built.’

‘My beliefs are scientific.’

‘Are they? I heard about the cave that was discovered in the hills, the prehistoric paintings. Figures of men chasing extinct animals, was it not?’

‘Yes. They’re probably priceless and you’re going to destroy them.’

‘That wasn’t my decision. But you believe these people lived as Communists, don’t you? Primitive communism, the first stage of the historical dialectic. You see, I know my Marx. But that is a belief, you cannot know how such people lived. You too live by faith; a false faith.’

It was like the psychiatrist again. Bernie wanted to hurt the priest, make him angry, as he had the doctor.

‘This is not some intellectual game. We’re in a place where sick men are denied doctors and worked to death by the government your church supports.’

The priest sighed. ‘You are not a Spaniard, Piper, how can you really understand the Civil War? I had friends, priests, who were caught in the Republican zone. They were shot, thrown from precipices, tortured.’

‘And so you take revenge on us. I thought Christians were supposed to be better than most men.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘What does the Bible say – by their fruits shall we know them.’

Father Eduardo didn’t get angry, his face was sad and burdened. ‘What do you think it is like for Father Jaime and me,’ he asked quietly, ‘working here among people who killed our friends? Why do you think we do it? For charity, to try and save those who hate us.’

‘You know if it is Father Jaime who comes to Vicente he will enjoy what he does. His revenge.’ He stood up. ‘May I go now, please?’

Father Eduardo raised a hand, then dropped it wearily to the desk. ‘Yes. Go.’

Bernie got up.

‘I shall pray for your friend,’ Father Eduardo said. ‘For his recovery.’

THAT EVENING Establo ordered a cell meeting. The ten Communists gathered around Pablo’s bed, at the farthest end of the hut.

‘We need to strengthen our Marxist faith,’ Establo said. Bernie looked into his face as he used that word. It was stern, severe. ‘The discovery of these paintings has made me think. We should have classes on the Marxist understanding of history, the development of the class struggle through the ages. Something to bond us closer together again; we need that with another winter upon us.’

One or two of the men nodded but others looked weary. Miguel, an old tramworker from Valencia, spoke up.

‘It’s too cold to sit around talking in the dark.’

‘And what if the guards find out?’ Pablo said. ‘Or someone tells?’

‘Who’s going to lead these classes?’ Bernie asked. ‘You?’ He could sense the meeting was going against Establo; he should have made this suggestion before the cold nights sent the men shrinking back into themselves.

The scaly head turned in Bernie’s direction, eyes bright with anger. ‘Yes. I am the cell leader.’

‘Comrade Establo is right,’ said Pepino, a hollow-faced young farmworker. ‘We need to remember what we are.’

‘Well, I for one haven’t the energy to listen to Comrade Establo lecturing us on historical materialism.’

‘I have decided, comrade,’ Establo said menacingly. ‘I’ve been elected, I make the decisions. That’s democratic centralism.’

‘No, it isn’t, I’ll take your orders against the feeling of this group when a properly constituted Central Committee of the Spanish Communist Party tells me to. Not before.’

‘There is no Central Committee any more,’ Pepino said sadly. ‘Not in Spain.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You should watch your mouth, inglés,’ Establo said softly. ‘I know your history. A worker’s son who went to an aristocrat’s school, an arriviste.’

‘And you’re a petit bourgeois drunk on power,’ Bernie told him. ‘You think you’re still a factory foreman. I’m loyal to the party but you’re not the party.’

‘I can expel you from this cell.’

Bernie laughed softly. ‘Some cell.’ He knew at once it was the wrong thing to say, it would put them against him, but his head was spinning with exhaustion and anger. He got up and walked back to his bed. He lay down, listening to the mutterings from the other end of the room. Someone shouted to them to be quiet, people wanted to sleep. Shortly afterwards he heard the pallet creak as Establo lay down opposite him. He heard him scratch, felt his eyes on him.

‘We are going to consider your case, compadre,’ Establo said softly. Bernie didn’t reply. He listened to Vicente’s rasping gurgling breath and wanted to howl with sorrow and rage. He remembered Agustín’s words that he had puzzled over. Better times. No, he thought. Whatever you meant there, you were wrong.

HE COULDN’T SLEEP that night. He lay on his bunk in the cold, not tossing and turning but looking into the darkness. He remembered how, in London, the Communist Party’s theories of the laws of class struggle had seemed to him like a revelation, the world explained at last. When he left Cambridge he had helped out in his parents’ shop at first, but his father’s depression and his mother’s complaining disappointment that he had thrown Cambridge away stifled him and he left and took rooms nearby.

The contrast between the wealth of Cambridge and the bleak shabby poverty of the East End, where unemployed men lounged on street corners and there were stirrings of a home-grown fascism, angered him more than ever. Millions were unemployed and the Labour Party did nothing. He kept in touch with the Meras; the Republic was a disappointment, the government refusing to raise taxes to finance reforms for fear of angering the middle classes. A friend took him to a Communist meeting and at once he felt, this is the truth, this is exposing how it all really works.

He studied Marx and Lenin; their harsh prose was a struggle at first, different from anything he had read before, but when he understood their analyses he saw that here was the uncompromising reality of the class struggle: iron hard, as his party tutor said. Only Communists had the ruthlessness to destroy fascism, capitalism’s last attempt to stave off its own destruction. Bernie slogged for the party, selling the Daily Worker outside factory gates in the rain, stewarding meetings in half-empty halls. Many of the local party members were middle-class, bohemian intellectuals and artists. He knew that for many of them communism was a fad, an act of rebellion, at the same time as he realized he felt more at home with them than the workers. With his public-school accent they took him for one of their own; it was one of them, a sculptor, who got Bernie his job as a model. Yet there was still a part of him that felt rootless, lonely, neither proletarian nor bourgeois, a disconnected hybrid.

IN JULY 1936 the Spanish army rose against the Popular Front government and the Civil War began. In the autumn the Communists started appealing for volunteers and he went to King Street and signed up.

He had to wait. The formation of the International Brigades, the routes and meeting points, was taking time. He became impatient. Then, after another fruitless visit to party headquarters, he disobeyed the party for the first and only time. He packed his bags and without a word to anybody he went to Victoria and caught the boat-train.

He arrived in Madrid in November; Franco had reached the Casa de Campo but so far he was being held, the citizenry of Madrid keeping back the Spanish army. The weather was cold and raw but the citizens, who five years before had appeared gloomy and listless, seemed to have sprung to life; there was revolutionary fervour and fierce enthusiasm everywhere. Trams and lorries full of workers in blue boiler suits and red kerchiefs passed by on the way to the front, ¡Abajo fascismo! chalked on the sides.

He should have reported to party HQ but it was late in the day when his train arrived and he headed straight for Carabanchel. A group of women and children were building a barricade at one corner of the Meras’ square, tearing up the cobbles. Seeing a foreigner, they lifted their hands in the clenched-fist salute. ‘¡Salud, compadre!’

‘¡Salud! ¡Unios hermanos proletarios!’ One day, Bernie thought, this will happen in England.

He had written to Pedro and they knew he was coming, though not when. Inés opened the door of the flat; she looked tired and weary, greying hair straggling round her face. Her face lit up when she saw him. ‘Pedro! Antonio!’ she called. ‘He’s here!’

There was a rifle in pieces on the salón table, an ancient-looking thing with an enormous muzzle. Pedro and Antonio stood turning parts over in their hands. They were dusty and unshaven, their boiler suits streaked with earth. Francisco, the consumptive son, sat watching in a chair, looking barely older after five years, thin and pale as ever. Little Carmela, eight now, sat on his knee.

Pedro wiped his hands on a piece of newspaper and rushed to embrace him. ‘Bernardo! My God, what a day to arrive.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Antonio is going to the front tomorrow.’

‘I’m trying to clean this old rifle they gave me,’ Antonio said proudly.

Inés frowned. ‘He doesn’t know how to put it back together!’

‘Maybe I can help.’ Bernie had been in the OTC at Rookwood. He remembered annoying the other pupils by saying military knowledge might be useful when the revolution came. He helped them put the rifle together. Then they cleared the table and Inés brought a cocido.

‘Have you come to help kill the Fascists?’ Carmela asked. She was wide-eyed with excitement and curiosity.

‘Yes,’ Bernie said, putting a hand on her head. He turned to Pedro. ‘I should report to Party HQ tomorrow.’

‘The Communists?’ Pedro shook his head. ‘We are beholden to them now. If only the British and French had agreed to sell us arms.’

‘Stalin knows how to fight a revolutionary war.’

‘Father and I have been digging trenches all afternoon,’ Antonio said seriously. ‘Then they gave me this rifle and told me to get a night’s sleep and report for action tomorrow.’

Bernie looked at Antonio’s thin boyish face. He took a deep breath.

‘Do you think there might be a rifle for me?’

Antonio looked at him seriously. ‘Yes. They want as many fit men as can hold one.’

‘When do you have to report?’

‘At dawn.’

‘I’ll come with you.’ Bernie experienced a strange leaping sensation, excitement and fear together. He gripped Antonio’s hand, found himself laughing; they were both laughing hysterically.

BUT HE WAS frightened when he rose with Pedro and Antonio at dawn. When they went outside Bernie could hear shell-fire in the distance. He shivered in the cold grey morning. Antonio had given him a red scarf; he wore the jacket and slacks he had arrived in with the scarf round his neck.

In the Puerta del Sol officers in khaki called the men into lines, leading them into the trams that were lined up one behind the other. As they rattled out of the centre the men were tense, gripping their rifles between their knees. At first it was like a normal journey, but as they travelled east there were fewer people, more militiamen and army lorries. When the tram jangled to a halt at the gates of the Casa de Campo, Bernie could hear ragged gunfire. His heart was thumping wildly as the sergeant shouted to them to disembark.

Then Bernie saw the bodies, half a dozen dead men laid in a row on the pavement, still wearing their red kerchiefs. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a body – his grandmother had been laid out in the room behind the shop before her funeral – but these men, whose faces were as still and grey as hers had been, were young. One boy had a round black hole in the middle of his forehead with a tiny drop of blood underneath, like a teardrop. His heart banged like a hammer and he felt a cold sweat on his brow as he followed Pedro and Antonio into a disorganized crowd of militiamen.

Pedro was led off to a digging detail and Bernie and Antonio and twenty others, some with rifles and others without, were ordered to follow a sergeant into a half-dug trench, men with spades pausing to let them by. Sandbags had been piled high on the side facing the Casa de Campo, from where sporadic gunfire was audible. Things were chaotic: men running to and fro, lorries sliding and slithering in the mud. The men leaned back uncertainly against the sandbags.

‘Jesus,’ Bernie said to Antonio. ‘This isn’t an army.’

‘It’s all we’ve got,’ Antonio said. ‘Here, hold this, I’m going to take a look.’ There was a ladder next to Antonio and before Bernie could stop him he had started climbing up it.

‘Stop it, you crazy bastard, you’ll get hit.’ Bernie remembered Pa saying that was how thousands of new recruits had died on the Western Front: taking a look over the top.

Antonio rested his arms on top of the sandbags. ‘It’s all right, they can’t see me. Christ, they’ve got field-guns and everything out there. Nothing’s moving—’

Bernie swore, put down the rifle and climbed up the ladder, grabbing at Antonio’s waist. ‘Get down!’

‘It’s all right.’

Bernie took another step up and grabbed Antonio’s shoulder, and that was when the sniper fired. The bullet missed Antonio’s head but hit Bernie’s arm. He gave a cry and the two of them tumbled together down the ladder into the trench. Bernie saw the blood welling up through his jacket and passed out.

A SPANISH commissar came to visit him in the field hospital.

‘You’re a fool,’ he told him. ‘You should have reported to Party HQ first; you’d have had some training.’

‘My friends said they needed every man in the Casa de Campo. I’m sorry.’

The commissar grunted. ‘You’ll be out of it for weeks now. And we will have to billet you somewhere when you get out of here.’

‘My friends in Carabanchel will look after me.’

The man looked at him askance. ‘Are they party?’

‘Socialists.’

The man grunted.

‘How’s the fighting?’ asked Bernie.

‘We’re holding them. We’re forming a Communist brigade, bringing in some discipline.’

BERNIE SHIFTED in his bunk, trying to warm his legs. In the next bed Vicente was making a horrible gurgling sound in his sleep. He remembered his weeks of convalescence in Carabanchel. His attempts to convert the Meras to communism were unsuccessful. They said the Russians were destroying the Republic, talking of cooperation with the progressive bourgeoisie while bringing in their secret police and spies. Bernie said the tales of Russian brutality were exaggerated, and you had to be hard in war. But it wasn’t easy to argue with a veteran of thirty years of class struggle like Pedro. Sometimes he began to doubt whether what they said about the Russians could all be lies, but he put those thoughts from his mind; they were a distraction and in the midst of this struggle he must stay focused.

The doubts returned, though, in the cold night. They had needed hard men then but what if they had won, would people like Establo be in charge now? The priest Eduardo had said Marxism was a false faith. He had never understood dialectical materialism properly and he knew many Communists didn’t, it was hard to understand. But communism wasn’t a faith, it wasn’t like Catholicism – it was rooted in an understanding of reality, of the material world.

He tossed and turned. He tried not to think of Barbara, it hurt too much, but her face still came back to him. Memories of her always brought guilt. He had abandoned her. He thought of her back in England, or perhaps in Switzerland, surrounded now by Fascist states. He used to say she didn’t understand things; tonight he was starting to wonder how much he had understood himself. He made himself think of an old comforting image he sometimes brought to mind when he couldn’t sleep, a scene from an old party newsreel he had seen in London. Tractors rolling through the endless Russian wheat-fields, followed by singing workers as they gathered in the plentiful grain.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

SANDY MET HARRY outside his flat early in the morning. It was a clear cold day, the sun low in a bright blue sky. Sandy stepped from his Packard and shook Harry’s hand. He wore a heavy camelhair coat and a silk scarf; the sunlight glinted on his oiled hair. He looked happy, exhilarated to be out so early.

‘What a fantastic morning!’ he said, looking at the sky. ‘We don’t get many mornings like this in winter.’

They drove north-west out of Madrid, climbing into the Guadarrama mountains. ‘Fancy coming round to dinner again soon?’ Sandy asked. ‘Just us and Barbara. She’s still a bit out of sorts. I thought it might cheer her up.’

‘That’d be good.’ Harry took a deep breath. ‘I’m grateful for your bringing me in on this.’

‘That’s all right,’ Sandy replied quietly, patronizingly. He smiled.

They climbed to the top of the mountain road; above them, the highest peaks were already covered in snow. Then they descended back into the bare brown countryside, drove through Segovia and turned west, towards Santa Maria la Real. There was little traffic, the countryside was still and empty. It reminded Harry of the day he arrived, the drive into Madrid with Tolhurst.

After an hour Sandy turned into a dusty cart track that wound between low hills. ‘We’re in for a bit of a bone-shaking, I’m afraid. It’s another half hour to the mine.’

On the track donkeys’ hoofmarks were overlaid with deep ruts made by heavy vehicles. The car clattered and juddered over them. Sandy drove confidently.

‘I find myself thinking about Rookwood since we met up again,’ he said reflectively. ‘Piper moved back into our study after I was sacked, didn’t he? You said in a letter.’

‘Yes.’

‘Bet he felt he’d won.’

‘I don’t think so. He hardly mentioned your name again, as I remember.’

‘I’m not surprised he turned to communism, he always had that fanatical streak. Used to look at me as though he’d like nothing better than to put me up against a wall to be shot.’ He shook his head. ‘The Communists are still the real danger to the world, you know. It’s Russia England should be fighting, not Germany. I thought things were going to turn out that way after Munich.’

‘Fascism and communism are as bad as each other.’

‘Oh, come on. At least with right-wing dictatorships our sort of people are looked after so long as we toe the party line. There’s hardly any income tax here. Though I admit dealing with the bureaucracy’s a pain in the arse. Still, the government has to teach the people who’s in charge. That’s their thinking, make everyone follow all these procedures, teach Spaniards order and obedience.’

‘But the bureaucracy’s completely corrupt.’

‘This is Spain, Harry.’ He gave him a glance of affectionate irony. ‘You’re still a Rookwood man at heart, aren’t you? Still believing all those codes of honour?’

‘I used to be. I’m not sure I’m anything any more.’

‘I admired you for it, you know, in the old days. But it’s schoolboy stuff, Harry, it’s not real life. I suppose the academic life’s pretty sheltered as well.’

‘Yes, you’re right, it is. I’ve had my eyes opened to some things out here.’

‘The real world, eh?’

‘You could say that.’

‘We all need security for the future now, Harry. I can help you get that if you let me.’ There was something like an appeal for approval in Sandy’s tone. ‘And nothing’s more secure than gold, especially these days. Look, here we are.’

Ahead a high barbed-wire fence ran round a wide stretch of rolling land. Large holes had been gouged in the yellow earth, some half filled with water. A couple of mechanical earth-movers sat nearby. The track ended at a gate with a wooden hut on the inner side. Two more huts, one large, stood at a little distance and there was a large stone blockhouse too. A board by the gate read: ‘Nuevas Iniciativas S.A. Keep Out. Sponsored by the Ministry of Mines.’

Sandy sounded his horn and a thin elderly man ran from the hut and opened the gates. He saluted Sandy as the car tooled through and came to a halt. They got out. A cold wind was blowing; it stung Harry’s cheeks. He pushed his hat down on his head.

Sandy turned to the gatekeeper. ‘All well, Arturo?’

‘Sí, Señor Forsyth. Señor Otero is here, he is in the office.’ The gatekeeper’s manner was deferential. What you’d expect from a junior staff member to the boss, Harry supposed. It was strange to think of Sandy as a boss, in charge of staff.

Sandy pointed into the distance. A sizeable farm, surrounded by poplars, was visible in a fold of the hills. Black cattle grazed in the fields around it.

‘That’s the place we want to buy. Alberto’s been onto the land on the q.t., taken some samples. He’s quite happy about your visit now, by the way. I talked him round. He was worried about trusting someone who worked at the embassy, but I told him your word was your bond, you wouldn’t say anything.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry felt a stab of guilt. He concentrated on what Sandy was saying.

‘The seam of gold runs right under that farm, gets richer there too. The owner breeds bulls for the corrida. He’s none too bright, he hasn’t twigged what we’re doing here. I think we could get him to sell.’ He laughed suddenly, gazing over the fields. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? All just lying there. Can’t believe it myself sometimes. And we’ll get that farm, don’t worry. I’ve told the farmer I’ll pay him cash, he can go and live with his daughter in Segovia.’ He turned to Harry. ‘I can usually persuade people to see things my way, sniff out something they want and dangle it before them.’ He smiled again.

Harry bent and scooped up some of the yellow soil. It was similar to the earth in the canister in Sandy’s office. It felt friable, cold. Sandy clapped him on the arm.

‘Let’s go and get a cup of coffee in the office. To warm us up.’ He led Harry towards the nearest hut. ‘No one’s here today, just the security people.’

The office was spartan: a desk and a few folding chairs. There was a picture of a flamenco dancer on one wall, and a photograph of Franco above a desk where Otero sat, reading a report. He rose when Harry and Sandy entered and shook Harry’s hand. He smiled, his manner much friendlier than a few days ago.

‘Señor Brett, welcome, thank you for coming all this way. Would you both like a coffee?’

‘Thanks, Alberto,’ Sandy replied. ‘We’ve been freezing our cojones off. Sit down, Harry.’

The geologist fussed with a kettle and gas stove that stood in a corner. Sandy sat on a corner of the desk and lit a cigarette. He picked up the document Otero had been reading.

‘This the report on the latest samples?’

‘Yes. The results are good. That section by the stream is one of the best. We only have powdered milk I am afraid, Señor Brett.’

‘That’s OK. It’s a big site.’

‘Yes. But the land we have has been comprehensively surveyed.’ He looked round at Harry. ‘The new samples are from the farm nearby.’

Otero handed round mugs of coffee and sat down again. ‘It is so frustrating. We cannot start intensive work until we have ministry clearance. Under Spanish law minerals under the soil belong to the government and it is a matter of agreeing our mining rights, our commission. The ministry keep demanding more samples, which cost more money, and we need funds if we are to buy the farm. We have the Generalísimo’s support in principle, but the ministry keep telling him to be cautious and he follows their advice after the Badajoz fiasco last year.’

‘If Madrid agreed and you got the farm, how much could you make? Over a year, say?’

Sandy laughed. ‘The big question.’

Otero nodded. ‘One cannot say exactly, but I would say twenty million pesetas. Once we bring the farm to full production, who knows – thirty, forty?’

‘That’s over a million pounds the first year,’ Sandy said. ‘If you bought a three per cent share, that’d be fifteen thousand sterling for a five hundred pounds investment. Thirty thousand if you put in a thousand.’

Harry sipped his coffee. It was bitter, globules of powdered milk floating on the surface. Sandy and Otero sat looking at him, smoke curling from their cigarettes.

‘That’s a lot of money,’ Harry said at length.

Otero laughed. ‘You English, always you understate everything.’

‘Especially Harry.’ Sandy laughed and stood up. ‘Come on, we’ll show you the diggings.’

They walked him over the site, showed him how slightly different colours in the earth indicated different gold content. The ground was dotted with little circular holes; Otero explained that was where samples had been taken. Clouds appeared, chasing each other across the sky.

‘Let’s look at the labs,’ Sandy said. ‘How’s your hearing these days? It seems OK.’

‘Yes, it’s pretty much back to normal now.’

‘Harry injured his ear at Dunkirk, Alberto. The Battle of France.’

‘Really?’ The geologist inclined his head in sympathy. They came to the laboratory hut and went in. There was a harsh chemical tang in the air. Long benches were covered with glass filters, big metal pans and trays full of clear liquid and the yellow earth.

‘Sulphuric acid,’ Sandy said. ‘Remember that from stinks lessons at school? Don’t touch any of those jars.’ They led him round, Otero explaining the processes for extracting gold from the ore. It didn’t mean much to Harry. As they left he looked again at the blockhouse, noticing the little windows were barred.

‘What’s that?’

‘We keep the ore for the second stage of the refining process there. It’s too valuable to leave lying around. The key’s back in the office, but have a look through the window if you like.’

The interior was dim but Harry made out more laboratory equipment. There were a number of large bins as well, mostly full to the brim with yellow soil, ground down to a fine tilth.

They went back to the office where Otero, still friendly, made more coffee.

‘I have experience on the South African goldfields,’ Otero said. ‘It was the place for a geologist to go when I was young. I learned some English there but I have forgotten it now.’ He smiled apologetically.

‘How does this place compare?’

Otero sat down. ‘Much smaller, of course. The Witwatersrand deposits are the biggest in the world. But there the quality of the ore is poor and the seams run deep underground. Here the quality is high and it is on or near the surface.’

‘Enough to give Spain serious gold deposits?’

‘Enough to make a significant difference to the country? Yes.’

Sandy looked at Harry over the rim of his cup. ‘What d’you say, then?’

‘I’m interested. But I’d like to consult my bank manager in London, write to him. Just in very general terms, about investing in a gold mine with proven reserves, I won’t say where, comparison with other investments and so forth.’

‘We’d need to see the letter,’ Sandy said. ‘Seriously, this is a confidential project.’

Otero looked at him with the sharpness Harry remembered. ‘As we said, no one at the embassy must know. A letter to England may be opened by the censor.’

‘Not if I send it via the diplomatic bag. But I don’t mind you seeing it before it goes, if you like.’

‘A bank manager will say it’s a risky investment,’ Sandy warned.

Harry smiled. ‘I won’t necessarily take his advice.’ He shook his head. ‘Three per cent of a million.’

‘In the first year.’ Sandy paused to let this sink in. Harry thought, perhaps that could have been mine if I wasn’t spying on them. He had a sudden urge to laugh.

Sandy rose and clapped his hands on his knees. ‘OK! I should be getting back. Dinner with Sebastian tonight.’

Otero smiled again as he shook Harry’s hand. ‘I hope you will come in with us, señor. It is the right time for you to invest. A thousand pounds would be useful to us now, prevent the ministry from grinding us down. And for you – ’ he waved a hand – ‘the possibilities…’ He raised his eyebrows.

As Harry and Sandy crossed to the car the gatehouse door opened. A different man emerged, small and thin. To his astonishment Harry recognized Maestre’s ex-batman, Milagros’s chaperone.

‘Lieutenant Gomez,’ he said without thinking. ‘Buenos días.’

‘Buen’día,’ Gomez muttered. His face wore an impassive soldier’s expression but an agonized beseeching look in his eyes brought Harry up short. His heart sank as he realized he had made a mistake, a serious one.

‘You know each other?’ Sandy’s voice was sharp.

‘Yes, we met at a–a function a while ago, didn’t we?’

‘Sí señor, a function, that was it.’ Gomez turned and opened the gate, keeping his head averted as the car passed through. Sandy watched him in his mirror as he went back into his hut.

‘He’s our new gatekeeper,’ he said. ‘Just come on duty.’ He spoke quietly, conversationally. ‘How did you come to meet him?’

‘Oh, at a function, a party.’

‘You met a doorkeeper at a party?’

‘As a servant, a servant. Family retainer or something. Perhaps he got caught pinching the spoons.’ Harry laughed.

Sandy was silent for a moment, frowning. ‘General Maestre’s party that you told me about? For his daughter?’

Hell, Harry thought, hell. Sandy was so bloody quick; Maestre’s party was the only one he had mentioned and Sandy would have remembered, Maestre being an enemy. Sandy was still looking at the gatekeeper in the driving mirror.

‘Yes. When I took Maestre’s daughter to the Prado later, he picked her up. As I say, he must have been sacked.’

‘Perhaps.’ Sandy paused. ‘He came recommended, said he was an unemployed veteran.’

‘If he was sacked, he’d need to explain not having references.’

Sandy’s voice became casual. ‘Seen any more of the daughter?’

‘No. I told you, she’s not my type. I’ve met someone else,’ he added, to distract Sandy’s interest. But Sandy only nodded. He was frowning now, thinking. Harry thought, Maestre’s put Gomez in here as a spy and I’ve just betrayed him. Hell. Hell.

They passed through a village. Sandy stopped at a bar. Outside, two donkeys stood tied to a rail.

‘Can you wait just a minute, Harry?’ he asked. ‘Got to make a quick phone call, something I forgot.’

Harry waited while he went into the bar. The donkeys at the rail made him think of the Wild West. Gunfights at dawn. What would they do to Gomez? The stakes were very big. He swallowed. Had Maestre sent him here as a spy? A couple of ragged children stood looking at the big American car. He waved and they turned and ran away, bare feet slithering in the mud.

Sandy emerged. His face was set and cold in a way that reminded Harry of the day he had been caned in class, the day he began planning his revenge on Taylor. He opened the car door and his face relaxed, he smiled. He got in. ‘Tell me more about this girl,’ he said as he started the engine.

Harry told a story of rescuing a stranger from some dogs and meeting his sister. The best lies are closest to the truth. Sandy smiled and nodded but that chilling look on his face as he returned to the car stayed in Harry’s mind. He had been phoning Otero, he must have been. He realized that he had been wrong about Sandy, wrong to think he didn’t really know about the terrible things that could happen, like Dunkirk. He knew about them and he could do terrible things himself. It was like at school, he didn’t care.

Chapter Thirty

IT HAD BEEN ARRANGED that when Harry returned from the mine he would go straight to the embassy for a debriefing. He asked Sandy to drop him at his flat, saying he had a document to translate. As soon as the car disappeared round the corner he left again, catching a tram to Calle Fernando el Santo.

Tolhurst was in his office, reading a four-day-old Times. There was a power cut, and he was wearing a chunky pullover with a garish design against the cold. It made him look younger, like a plump schoolboy. He waved Harry in.

‘How’d it go?’ he asked eagerly.

‘There’s a mine all right.’ Harry sat down. He took a long deep breath. ‘But something’s gone wrong.’

Tolhurst’s round face seemed to narrow. ‘What? He’s not on to you?’

‘No. He took me round the mine. It’s out beyond Segovia; covers a big area, though production seems to be at an early stage. Otero was there, very friendly this time.’

‘And?’

‘As we were leaving, the watchman came out to open the gate and I recognized him. It was a man called Gomez. He works for Maestre; remember, we met him at the party?’

‘Yes, his old batman, or something.’

‘I didn’t think, I said hello. He acknowledged me but I could see he was terrified.’

‘Hell. How did Forsyth respond?’

‘He was on to it straight away, asked me where I’d met Gomez.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, Simon, I – I was on the spot, I couldn’t think of a lie. I said he’d worked for Maestre, I said perhaps he’d been sacked. It was all I could think of.’

‘Damn.’ Tolhurst picked up a pencil, and turned it over and over in his hands. Harry felt furious with himself, horrified by the thought of what the consequences of his slip might be for Gomez. ‘I could see Sandy was worried. He stopped in a village, said he had to make a phone call. He looked grim when he came out. I think he was ringing Otero. Simon, how is Maestre mixed up in all this?’

Tolhurst bit his lip. ‘I don’t know, but he’s mixed up in most of the Monarchist-Falange battles. We knew he was on the committee dealing with the gold mine but the captain hasn’t been able to get anything out of him. He’s close-mouthed where what he sees as Spain’s national interests are concerned.’

So the Knights of St George will only take you so far, Harry thought.

‘You shouldn’t have blurted out hello to someone you knew worked for him,’ Tolhurst said sharply. ‘You should have guessed he might be undercover.’

‘I haven’t had to think fast on my feet like that before. I’m sorry. I was concentrating so much on the site, trying to seem like a bona fide investor.’

Tolhurst put the pencil down. ‘Forsyth will realize Maestre wouldn’t just sack an ex-batman he allowed to be a chaperone for his daughter. Christ, Harry, this is a balls-up.’ He put both hands on the table and lifted himself up reluctantly. ‘I’m going to have to tell the captain. He’s with Sir Sam, there’s a diplomatic bag going tonight. You wait here.’

He left, leaving Harry staring miserably out of the window. A pedlar rode a little donkey down the street, his feet almost touching the ground on either side. Heavy bundles of wood were strapped to its back. Harry wondered at the load the small beasts were made to carry; you would think its spine would break.

Rapid footsteps sounded outside. Harry stood up as Tolhurst held the door open for Hillgarth to enter, his face grim. He was followed by the ambassador. Hoare’s thin face was red with anger. He threw himself into Tolhurst’s chair, glowering.

‘You bloody fool, Brett,’ Hillgarth began. ‘What possessed you?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know that Maestre—’

Hoare addressed Hillgarth in tones that cut like a knife. ‘Alan, I warned you this operation was risky. I’ve always said, no covert operations, we should be gathering intelligence, nothing else. We’re not the bloody SOE. But oh no, you and Winston had to have your adventures! Now we could have compromised relations with the whole Monarchist faction thanks to this idiot.’ He waved at Harry as though flicking away a troublesome insect.

‘Come on, Sam, Maestre should have told us if he was running his own show.’

‘Why should he? Why? It’s his bloody country. Why shouldn’t he put a spy into a Falange-controlled project?’ Hoare put a hand, shaking with fury, to his brow. ‘Maestre’s one of our best sources. I’ve sweated blood this last five months to convince the Monarchists we have common interests, England’s not a threat to them. I’ve tried to persuade Winston to make friendly noises about Gibraltar and expel Negrín’s rabble. You know what else I’ve done too. And now they’ll find out we’re running a covert operation, one that clashes with one of theirs, despite all my promises of support.’

‘If something happens to this Gomez,’ Hillgarth said, ‘there’s no connection to us.’

‘Don’t be a fool! If Maestre’s had a man on site he’ll have been nosing about their papers. That’s the first thing he’d do. And what if there’s a note about a potential investor in this project called H. Brett Esquire, translator in His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service.’ Hoare’s thin face sagged, he looked exhausted. ‘I suppose I’d better ring Maestre and warn him, try to limit the damage.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Harry ventured. ‘If I’d known—’

Hoare glared at Harry, his top lip curling over little white teeth. ‘If you’d known? It’s not your bloody business to know, it’s your job to stay sharp and field the balls.’ He turned back to Hillgarth. ‘You’d better abort the project. Send this bloody fool home, he can go and fight the Italians in North Africa. I said if we had to do this we’d have been better to approach Forsyth directly and try to buy him, without all this cloak and dagger stuff.’

Hillgarth spoke quietly, though his voice had an undertone of suppressed anger. ‘Ambassador, we agreed that course was too risky unless we knew what the project was worth to him. We know that now, we know how important it is. And Brett’s cover isn’t blown; if he told Forsyth he knew Maestre’s man that could even strengthen his credibility.’

‘I must phone Maestre. We’ll talk later.’ Hoare rose. Tolhurst ran to open the door for him. The ambassador glared at him as he passed through. ‘You should have known better, Tolhurst. Hillgarth, I want you with me for this call.’

Tolhurst closed the door slowly behind them. ‘You’d better go home, Harry. They’ll be arguing about this all evening.’

‘I’m supposed to be going to the theatre tonight. Macbeth. Will that be all right?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Tolly, what did Hoare mean there, you should have known better?’

Tolhurst smiled wryly. ‘I’m your watcher, Harry. I keep a close eye on how you’re doing, report to Captain Hillgarth. Every inexperienced spy has a watcher and I’m yours.’

‘Oh.’ Harry had wondered, but the realization still gave him a sinking, disappointed feeling.

‘I’ve always said you were doing well; Hillgarth’s been a bit impatient but I’ve told him you were playing Forsyth carefully. You’ve done very well, up to now. But you can’t afford any mistakes, not in this job.’

‘Oh.’

‘I didn’t think you’d drop a bollock like this. That’s the trouble, if you like a fellow, it biases you in his favour.’ Tolhurst gave Harry a resentful look. ‘You’d better go. Stay out of Hillgarth’s sight. I’ll ring you when we need you.’

HARRY ARRIVED LATE at the theatre. He had spent hours pacing round the flat, thinking about his mistake, Hoare’s and Hillgarth’s anger, Tolhurst’s revelation that he had been, in a way, spying on Harry. I’m not cut out for this, Harry thought; I never wanted it. If they sent him home he wouldn’t be sorry, even if it was in disgrace. He’d be glad never to see Sandy again. But he couldn’t get rid of the thought of Gomez, the sudden terror in the old soldier’s eyes.

He told himself this wasn’t doing any good. He looked at his watch and was startled to realize how late it was. After thinking about Sofia for so long, he had hardly thought of her at all that day. He changed hurriedly, grabbed his coat and hat and hurried out.

Sofia was already waiting when he arrived at the theatre, a little figure in a beret and her old black coat, standing in the shadow of the doors as well-dressed couples went up the theatre steps. She wasn’t carrying a handbag; perhaps she couldn’t afford one. The sight of her, small and vulnerable, made his heart lurch. As he approached he saw that a beggar, an old man in a homemade wheelchair, was wheedling her.

‘I’ve given you all I can spare,’ she said.

‘Please, just a little more. To eat tomorrow.’

Harry ran up. ‘Sofia,’ he said breathlessly, ‘I’m so sorry I am late.’ She looked at him with relief. He passed fifty centimos to the beggar and he wheeled himself away.

‘There was a – a bit of a crisis at work. Have you been waiting long?’

‘No. But because I am here that man thought I had money.’

‘Oh dear, what can I say?’ He smiled. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘And you.’

‘How’s Enrique?’

She smiled again. ‘Almost healed.’

‘Right.’ He coughed. ‘Shall we go in?’ He offered her his arm diffidently. She took it. Her body against his warmed him.

Sofia had made a big effort: her long hair was curled fashionably at the ends and she wore powder and lipstick. She looked beautiful. The rest of the audience milling in the vestibule were well-dressed bourgeois, the women with pearl earrings and necklaces. Sofia surveyed them with a look of amused contempt.

Harry had got seats in the middle of the theatre. It was full. Someone at the embassy had said cultural life was flickering back into life, and those who could afford it were evidently hungry for a night out.

Sofia removed her coat. Underneath she wore a long, well-cut white dress that set off her dark skin, her neckline lower than was strictly proper now. Harry turned his eyes away hastily. She smiled at him.

‘Ah, it is so warm in here, how do they do it?’

‘Central heating.’

At the interval they went for a drink to the bar. Sofia seemed ill at ease in the crush and coughed at her first sip of wine.

‘Are you all right?’

She laughed, a nervous laugh, a change from her usual confidence.

‘I am sorry. Only I am not used to such a crowd. When I am not at home I am in the dairy.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I am more used to cows than people.’ A woman stared at her with raised eyebrows.

‘What’s it like there?’ Harry knew the back streets of Madrid were full of little dairies, cramped, unhygienic places.

‘Hard work. But at least I get milk for the family.’

‘You must get tired of it.’

‘It keeps us going. The men from the government agency come every day to take their hundred litres. By the time they have watered it down for the ration it is two hundred litres.’

‘Terrible.’ Harry shook his head.

‘You are a strange man,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Your interest in my life. A smelly dairy is far from what you are used to, I think.’ She leaned forward. ‘Listen to these people talking of the things they have bought on the black market and their troubles with servants: are those not the things your class usually discuss?’ The faint mocking smile was on her face again.

‘Yes. But I’m tired of it.’

A bell rang and they returned to the play.

During the second half Harry turned to look at her a couple of times, but Sofia was absorbed in the performance; she didn’t turn and smile as he hoped. They reached the point where Lady MacBeth sleepwalks, tortured with guilt for the murder she has urged her husband to commit. ‘What, will these hands never be clean.’ Harry felt a sudden wave of panic at the thought that he might have brought death to Gomez, might have blood on his hands. He gasped and gripped the arms of the chair; Sofia turned and looked at him. When the play ended, the national anthem sounded through loudspeakers. Harry and Sofia stood but did not join the many in the audience who raised their arms in the Fascist salute.

Outside in the cold, Harry felt strange again, stranger than he had in months. The buzzing in his ears was back, his heart was beating fast and his legs, he realized, were shaking. He supposed it was a delayed reaction to all that had happened that day. As they walked to the tram stop he tried to make conversation, aware there was a tremble in his voice. He did not take Sofia’s arm; he didn’t want her to feel his trembling.

‘Did you enjoy the play?’

‘Yes.’ Sofia smiled. ‘I had not realized Shakespeare could be so passionate. The murderers all got their just reward, did they not?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is not how it is in the real world.’

He hadn’t heard her properly. She had to repeat herself. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he agreed.

They had reached the tram stop. Harry was trembling all over now, he longed desperately to get out of the cold damp air. There were no trams waiting at the stop. There was nobody else waiting, either, which probably meant one had just gone. He needed to sit down as well. He cursed his panic; if it had to come, why couldn’t it have been at the flat, when he was alone?

‘Are you all right?’ he heard Sofia ask.

There was no point in pretending, he could feel his face covered with a cold sweat now. ‘I don’t feel too good. I’m sorry, I get these little attacks sometimes, since I was in the fighting in France. I’ll be all right, I’m sorry, it’s stupid.’

‘It is not stupid.’ She looked at him with concern. ‘It happens to men in war, I saw it here. You should get a taxi, I will take you home. You should not wait here in the cold.’

‘I’ll be all right, honestly.’ He hated showing weakness like this, hated it.

‘No, I will get a taxi.’ Suddenly she was the one in charge, as she had been at the flat. ‘Will you be all right for a moment while I go to the junction, I saw some waiting there.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I will only be a minute.’ She touched his arm, smiled and was gone. Harry leaned against the cold tram stop, taking deep breaths, in through his nose and out through his mouth as they had told him at the hospital. A few moments later a taxi drew up.

He felt better at once, sitting down in the warmth. He smiled sadly at Sofia. ‘What an end to the evening, eh? Drop me off and I’ll pay the taxi to get you home.’

‘No, I want to make sure you are all right. You are very pale.’ She studied him with a professional gaze.

The taxi dropped them off. Harry was afraid he would need her help to get up the stairs but he was much better now; he walked up unaided. He let them in and they went into the salón.

‘Sit down on the settee, there,’ she said. ‘Have you any spirits?’

‘There’s some whisky in that cupboard.’

She fetched a glass from the kitchen and made him drink. The whisky gave him a little jolt. She smiled. ‘There. The colour is coming back to your cheeks.’ She lit the brasero then sat on the other end of the settee, looking at him.

‘Have one yourself,’ he said.

‘No thank you. I do not like it much.’ She looked at his parents’ photograph.

‘That’s my mother and father.’

‘It is a nice photograph.’

‘Your mother showed me her wedding photograph, that day I brought Enrique back.’

‘Yes. Her and Papa and Uncle Ernesto.’

‘Your uncle was a priest, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. In Cuenca. We haven’t heard from him since the Civil War started. He may be dead; Cuenca was in the Republican zone. Do you mind, Harry, may I smoke?’

‘Of course.’ He took an ashtray from the coffee table and passed it to her. His hand trembled slightly, he saw.

‘Was it bad?’ she asked. ‘The war in France?’

‘Yes. A shell landed right beside me, killed the man I was with. I was deaf for a while and had these wretched panic attacks. It’s been much better recently. I fought it, I thought I’d beaten it, but it came back tonight.’

‘I wonder if you take enough care of yourself.’

‘I’m all right. I can’t complain, I get good rations and live in this big flat.’

‘Yes, it is nice.’ She looked around the room. ‘But it has a gloomy atmosphere somehow.’

‘It’s too big for me really. I rattle about a bit. It used to belong to a Communist official.’

‘Those people did themselves well.’ She sighed.

‘Sometimes I seem to feel his presence.’ Harry laughed self-consciously.

‘Madrid is full of ghosts now.’

All the lights went out, plunging them into total darkness except for the glow of the brasero. They both exclaimed, then Sofia said, ‘It is only another power cut.’

‘God, what a moment for that to happen.’

They both laughed.

‘I’ve got some candles in the kitchen,’ Harry said. ‘Give me a match to see by and I’ll fetch them. Unless you’d rather go home now?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It is good to talk.’

Harry lit candles and set them in saucers. They cast a flickering yellow light over the room. Where it caught the candlelight Harry noticed again how her hair wasn’t quite black, there were elusive shades of brown there too. Her face was sad.

‘We are always getting cuts,’ she said. ‘We get used to it.’

Harry was silent a moment, then said, ‘I’ve seen more hardship here than I ever thought possible.’

‘Yes.’ Sofia sighed again. ‘Remember our beata, Señora Avila? She visited us yesterday. She says the priest is concerned we cannot afford to look after Paco properly; he wants us to let him go to the orphanage. The priest would not come himself as we do not go to church. That of course is the real reason they want Paco away from us. But they will not get him.’ Her mouth went hard for a moment. ‘Enrique will soon be able to work again. There may be a place for him at the dairy.’

‘I have a friend, an Englishwoman, she worked for a while in one of the orphanages. She said it was a bad place. She left.’

‘I have heard of children who kill themselves. That is what I fear for Paco. He is always so frightened. He hardly ever speaks, and only to us.’

‘Is there nobody who could – I don’t know – help him?’

She laughed bitterly. ‘Who? There is only us.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She leaned forward, her large eyes glinting in the candlelight. ‘You have no reason to be sorry. You have been kind. You care. The foreigners, and those who have money here, they shut their eyes to how people live. And those who have nothing are beaten down, apathetic. It is good to meet someone who cares.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Even if it makes you sad. You are a good man.’

Harry thought of Gomez, his terrified eyes. He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I’d like to be but I’m not.’ He put his head in his hands. He sighed deeply, then looked up at her. She smiled. Then he slowly put out his hand and took hers. ‘You are the good one,’ he said.

She did not move her hand. Her eyes softened. He leaned slowly towards her and put his lips to hers. Her dress made a rustling sound as she leaned forward and kissed him back, a long deep kiss with a sharp exciting tang of smoke. He pulled away.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re alone in my flat, I didn’t mean—’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘No. I am glad. It was not hard to see how you felt. And I have been thinking of you since the first time you came, sitting in our salón looking so lost but wanting to help us.’ She lowered her head. ‘I did not want to feel this, our lives are complicated enough. That is why I did not get the doctor at first.’ She smiled. ‘Poor Enrique. You see, I am selfish really.’

He leaned forward and took her hand. It was small, warm, pulsing with life.

‘You’re the least selfish person I’ve ever met.’ Something in him still hesitated, he couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

‘Harry,’ she said.

‘You pronounce my name like no one else,’ he said with a little choking laugh.

‘It is easier to pronounce than the way the English say David.’

‘The boy from Leeds?’

‘Yes. We were together for a while. In war you have to take chances while you can. Perhaps I shock you. The Catholics would say I am an immoral woman.’

‘Never.’ He hesitated, then leaned forward and kissed her again.

Chapter Thirty-One

BARBARA HAD HEARD that if you loved a person and then stopped loving them, sometimes it turned into hate. She hadn’t believed it but it was true. Sandy had said her heart was full of sentimental mush, but it wasn’t, it was full of loathing now.

She had to hide her feelings. It was Wednesday, and she had met Luis again; Agustín would be back from leave in three weeks’ time, on the fourth of December. As soon as he came back, Luis would go to Cuenca and finalize everything. The date for the escape would depend on the guards’ timetables but they should be able to do it before Christmas. During that time she had to make sure Sandy suspected nothing.

The house with its big rooms and expensive, immaculately clean furniture felt increasingly oppressive. Sometimes Barbara wanted to pull down the highly polished mirrors and smash them on the waxed tables. As she moved restlessly through the house or looked out at the wintry garden, she began wondering if she was going a little mad.

After their argument over the orphanage Barbara had once again made herself as agreeable and submissive as she could. The Sunday after their row Sandy went out for the morning in the car; business, he said. Barbara went for a walk and bought some Andalusian roses in an exclusive flower shop; they were expensive but they were Sandy’s favourites. She brought them in to dinner in a vase. He picked one up and sniffed it.

‘Very nice,’ he said flatly. ‘You’re out of the sulks, then?’ He was still in an angry mood.

She said quietly, ‘There’s no point in quarrelling.’

‘Your letter to Sister Inmaculada’s raised a few eyebrows. One or two people have asked if I’m harbouring a subversive.’

‘Look, Sandy, I don’t want to cause problems with your business friends. Why don’t I volunteer for something else, work at one of the veterans’ hospitals perhaps?’

He grunted. ‘They’re mostly run by the Falange. I don’t want you rowing with them next.’

‘So long as I don’t have to see children mistreated, that’s all.’

He looked at her, his eyes bleak and cold.

‘Most children are mistreated. It’s the way of the world. Unless you’re lucky, like my brother. You were mistreated, so was I.’

‘Not like that.’

‘It’s all mistreatment.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll talk to Sebastian about the veterans.’

‘Thanks.’ She tried to sound grateful. Sandy grunted and bent his head to his plate.

He hadn’t approached her for sex since their row. The next afternoon, Barbara had gone down to the kitchen to speak to Pilar and on the stairs she had heard a laugh. Sandy was there, leaning on the table, smoking a cigarette and smiling, a lubricious smile. Pilar stood washing dishes at the sink, laughing too; when she caught sight of Barbara she blushed scarlet and bowed her head.

‘I’ve brought the shopping list, Pilar,’ Barbara said coldly. ‘I’ll leave it on the table.’

Afterwards she said nothing but he did. They were sitting in the salón and he sat back, twirling his whisky glass. He smiled. ‘Nice girl, Pilar. She can be quite cheeky sometimes.’

Barbara continued threading a needle. He’s doing this to punish me, she thought, as though I cared now. ‘How you men like to flirt with servants,’ she said lightly. ‘I suppose it’s a fantasy, a public-school thing.’

‘If you knew what some of my fantasies are,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t like them.’ Something in his tone made her look at him sharply. He looked at her coldly and took another swig of whisky.

‘I must get that pattern Mum sent,’ she said. She went out and stood in the hall, taking deep breaths. Sometimes she just had to get away from him. She would think, I’ll sit with him for an hour, then get out for a few minutes. And that’ll be another hour nearer getting away for good.

She went up to their bedroom. She didn’t need the pattern but supposed she had better take it. While she was there she unlocked the drawer in her bureau and fingered her bank book. She was glad the bureau had a good strong lock; she always kept the key in her pocket.

She took a deep breath. She would have to go back downstairs, try to calm things. She could ask him how things were going with Harry, whether Harry was joining this project, whatever it was. But if he insisted on using Pilar to mock her, let him. She would pretend to be hurt and that would be another excuse to avoid making love if he came near her again.

TO HER RELIEF Sandy didn’t mention Pilar again that evening. When she asked him about Harry he said he had invited him to dinner again on Thursday week. He got up, saying there was some paperwork he needed to sort out in his study. She sighed with relief as the door closed behind him.

Shortly afterwards she heard the telephone ring twice then suddenly stop; Sandy must have answered it on the study extension. It made her jump slightly; she started again a moment later as the doorbell rang loudly. Who on earth’s this, she thought, it’s getting late. She put down her sewing.

She heard Pilar come up from the kitchen, her heels clacking on the tiles. A minute later she knocked and entered the salón. Little as she cared what Sandy did now, Barbara felt a spurt of anger. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

Pilar wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘If you please, señora, it is a man to see Señor Forsyth. He looks a little – ’ she hesitated – ‘foreign. I know Señor Forsyth does not like to be disturbed in his study.’

‘I’ll see who it is.’ She got up and walked past the girl. A blast of cold air came from the hall; Pilar had left the front door ajar. A small elderly man in a stained coat and a battered Homburg hat stood on the doorstep. He wore spectacles held together over the bridge of his nose with tape. He lifted his hat.

‘¿Perdon, señora, esta el señor Forsyth en casa?’ He spoke Spanish slowly and with effort, in a strong French accent. Barbara replied in French.

‘Yes. How can we help you?’

The old man’s face creased with relief. ‘Ah, you speak French. My Spanish is poor. I am sorry to disturb you. My name is Blanc, Henri Blanc, I have something I must give Señor Forsyth.’ He felt inside his coat, producing a little canvas bag. It made a chinking sound. Barbara stared in puzzlement.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I should explain. I am one of the refugees Señor Forsyth has been assisting.’

‘Oh, I see.’ That explained the down-at-heel clothes, the French accent. He was one of the Jews. She held the door open. ‘Please come in.’

The old man shook his head. ‘No, no, please. I do not wish to disturb you so late. Only I heard today I have my pass to go to Lisbon.’ He smiled, unable to conceal his delight. ‘I leave with my family early tomorrow. I could not go without bringing what I had promised.’ He proffered the bag again. ‘Please, take it. Tell him it is pure quality as I said. These have been in our family a long time but it is worth it to get to Lisbon.’

‘All right.’ Barbara took the package. ‘You must have had a long walk – are you sure you won’t come in for a minute?’ She looked at his shoes, the heels were almost worn away, he had probably walked from France in them.

‘No, thank you. I must get back.’ He smiled. ‘But I had to keep my promise. Thank Señor Forsyth for me. We have been so worried; we hear the Germans are sending Republican refugees back from France and worry they may demand us in return. But now we will be safe, thanks to your husband.’ He reached out and shook her hand, then replaced his hat and turned, limping slowly down the drive.

Barbara closed the door. She saw a shadow at the top of the basement stairs and realized Pilar had been standing there listening. Was this how it was going to be with her from now on?

‘Pilar,’ she called sharply, ‘could you make me a chocolate please.’ The shadow jumped and the girl called, ‘Sí, señora.’ Her footsteps clumped rapidly down the steps to the kitchen. Barbara stood in the hall, weighing the bag in her hands. It wasn’t coins, it was something lighter. She went back into the salon and opened the drawstring. She tipped the contents into her palm.

There were rings and necklaces, a couple of brooches and some strangely shaped items that looked as though they might have a religious function. They were all gold, bright shiny gold. She frowned, puzzled.

She supposed she had better take the bag up to Sandy. She mounted the stairs slowly. The central heating hissed and gurgled in the quiet hallway. A light shone under the study door. She could hear him talking, he must still be on the telephone. She was about to knock but something in his tone stopped her. It reminded her of when he had mentioned his fantasies earlier.

‘He should be talking by now. You’ve had him all day. What have you done to him?’ There was silence, then Sandy’s voice again. ‘Those old Moroccan sweats are tough. He still says Gomez is his real name? Well, I suppose it makes sense, they’d have had to run up forged papers for a false name and that’s Gestapo territory.’ There was more silence, a couple of grunts acknowledging what the man at the other end was saying, then Sandy’s voice again, a harsh, angry edge to it. ‘I’ll leave it in your capable hands.’ He paused, then added, ‘There’re enough places around Santa Maria. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve Brett’s paperwork here. No, he trusts me. Yes. Adíos.’ There was a tinkle as he replaced the receiver.

The phrases rang in Barbara’s head. What have you done to him? Gestapo territory. And Harry was involved somehow. She stood there, heart thumping. She heard Sandy opening a drawer in his desk, a grunt. She swallowed and stepped quietly from the door, holding the canvas bag tightly. She would give it to him later.

In the salón Pilar had left a cup of chocolate on the sewing table. She sat down heavily, the bag in her lap. Just what the hell was Sandy involved in? She thought again of his taunt about his fantasies. He could be capable of anything, she thought; I’ve never really known him at all. She swallowed again and placed the bag on the sewing table. She stared at it, her body tensed, ears alert for his footstep outside.

Chapter Thirty-Two

SOFIA AND HARRY walked slowly through the Rastro crowds. It was Sunday, a cool cloudy day, and Madrid’s main street market was packed. The rickety wooden stalls with their awnings spilled into the narrow streets around Plaza de Cascorro. They were covered with junk of every imaginable variety – cheap ornaments, pieces of broken down machinery, canaries in wooden cages. Harry would have liked to take Sofia’s hand but that was now forbidden as immoral unless the couple were married. Pairs of guardias stood in doorways here and there, looking at the crowd with cold hard eyes.

It was exactly a week since they had made love in Harry’s flat. Since then they had managed to see each other most days. Harry had time on his hands; he had had no further instructions from the spies. Sofia would come round to his flat in the evenings, leaving early because of her early shifts at the dairy.

He was happy to be in love for the first time, happy that his orderly world had been turned upside down. When the latest letter from Will arrived he read of their problems with getting a cleaner for their house in the country, the children’s schooling, and felt unimaginably distant from his cousin’s world at the same time as he felt a warm rush of love for him.

There were secrets, though. Harry wanted nothing more than to tell Sofia about his work as a spy and how he hated it, how his only friend at the embassy had turned out to be his watcher: but he couldn’t and mustn’t. Sofia, meanwhile, had not told her family of their relationship. She said it wasn’t the right time. When she left Enrique to look after their mother and Paco in the early evenings she told him she went visiting one of the girls from the dairy. She didn’t seem to mind lying to her brother; Harry wondered whether perhaps families as close as theirs could only cope with that closeness by having secrets.

Today was Sofia’s weekly day off from the dairy. She had arranged for Enrique to stay at home to look after their mother and Paco.

They had made love at Harry’s flat and then Sofia suggested the Rastro. As they threaded their way through the crowds, Harry whispered to her. ‘You never smell of milk. Why don’t you smell of milk?’

She laughed. ‘What do I smell of?’

‘Just you. A clean smell.’

‘When I went to work there I promised myself I wouldn’t end up smelling like the others. There is a shower there; it is freezing cold and has a concrete floor with a broken metal drain you must be careful not to fall into, but I shower every day.’

‘No one will ever keep you down, will they?’

‘No.’ She smiled at him. ‘I hope not.’

They walked deeper into the crowds, laughing at some of the bizarre things up for sale, and passed into the part of the market that sold food. Most of the stalls were nearly empty, only a few dried-up vegetables here and there. A meat stall sold offal that Harry could smell six feet away but there was a queue waiting to buy it. Sofia saw his disgusted look.

‘People will buy anything now,’ she said. ‘The ration wouldn’t feed a dog.’

‘I know.’

‘Everyone is desperate. That’s why Enrique took that job, you know. He is a good man at heart, he didn’t want to be a spy.’

‘I wonder whether not being good at spying makes you a better man?’

‘Perhaps it does. People who are good at deceiving cannot be good people, can they? He is happier as a street cleaner.’

‘How is his leg?’

‘All right. He is still tired in the evenings, but that will get better. Señora Avila is disappointed. Now there is more income coming into the family she has lost one excuse to run to the priest with, that we cannot afford to care for Paco.’

He looked at her. ‘What was your uncle the priest like?’ he asked.

Sofia smiled sadly. ‘Mama and Papa moved from Tarancón to Madrid to find work when I was small and Uncle Ernesto went to a parish in Cuenca. Although my parents were Republicans they kept in touch, family is everything in Spain. We used to go and stay with Uncle Ernesto for a few days every summer when I was small. I remember being amazed by his sotana.’ She laughed. ‘I remember I asked my mother why Uncle wore a dress. But he was kind. He let me clean the candlesticks in the church. I would leave great finger-marks all over them, but he said it didn’t matter. He must have got one of his beatas to polish them again afterwards.’ She looked at Harry. ‘Since the war ended Mama has said one of us should go to Cuenca and see if he is still alive. But even if we could afford it I do not think it is a good idea. I heard bad stories of what happened to the priests and nuns there.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She grasped his hand for a moment, hidden by the press of the crowd. ‘At least I had a family to look after me. I wasn’t sent away to some school like you.’

Ahead of them the street broadened out. It was particularly busy here and Harry saw an unusual number of well-dressed customers crowded round a stall, their faces intent, frowning. A pair of civiles stood in a doorway, watching.

‘What’s going on?’ Harry asked.

‘This is where all the things that were taken from the houses of the rich in 1936 end up,’ Sofia said. ‘The people who took them need the money for food so they sell them to the stallholders. Rich Madrileños come here to try to find their family heirlooms.’

They walked past the stalls. There were expensive-looking vases and dinner services, porcelain figures and even an old record-player with a silver horn. Harry read the inscription on it. ‘To Don Juan Ramirez Dávila from his colleagues at the Banco de Santander, 12.7.19.’ An elderly woman picked through a heap of brooches and mother-of-pearl necklaces. ‘We’ll never find it, Dolores,’ her husband murmured wearily. ‘You have to forget about it.’

Harry picked up a porcelain figure of a woman in eighteenth-century dress, her nose chipped. ‘Some of these probably meant a lot to someone once.’

‘They were bought with money stolen from the people,’ Sofia replied, a harshness in her voice.

They passed on to a table with a huge pile of photographs. People were crowded around sorting through them, and here the faces were sad, stricken, some looking frantic as they delved through the piles.

‘Where did all these come from?’ Harry asked.

‘Photographs would be taken from the frames when they were sold. People come here looking for photographs of their families.’

Some of the photos were recent, some half a century old. Wedding photographs, family portraits, black and white and sepia. A young man in a military uniform, smiling into the camera; a young couple sitting outside a taverna hand in hand. Harry realized many of them must be dead now. No wonder these people were looking so intently; here they might find the only image left of a lost son or brother.

‘So many gone,’ he muttered. ‘So many.’

Sofia leaned in to him. ‘Harry, do you know that man over there? He is looking at us.’

Harry turned and drew in his breath sharply. General Maestre was standing by the porcelain stall with his wife and Milagros. He wore civilian clothes, a heavy coat and a trilby. Out of uniform his weatherbeaten features looked harsher, older. Señora Maestre was examining a silver candleholder but the general was frowning in Harry’s direction. Milagros was looking at him too, her eyes sad in her plump face. He met her eye and she blushed and lowered her head. Harry nodded at the general. He raised his eyebrows slightly before nodding briefly in return, a jerk of the head.

‘It’s a government minister, General Maestre,’ Harry whispered.

‘How do you know him?’ Sofia’s voice was suddenly sharp, her eyes wide.

‘I had to translate for him. It’s embarrassing, I went out with his daughter once, I was pushed into it. Come on, let’s go.’

But the crowd round the pile of photographs was so thick they had to turn the other way, towards Maestre. The general stepped forward into Harry’s path and greeted him unsmilingly.

‘Señor Brett, good morning. Milagros was wondering if you had vanished from the earth.’

‘I’m sorry, general, I’ve been very busy, I—’

He glanced at Sofia. She gave him a cold, angry look. ‘Milagros was hoping you would ring her,’ the general went on. ‘Though she has given up now.’ He glanced back at his family. ‘My wife likes to come here, try to find some of our looted family treasures. I tell her she will catch something, mixing with these whores from the slums.’ He raised his eyebrows at Sofia, running his eyes up and down her old black coat, then turned and walked back to his wife and Milagros, who was pretending to be absorbed with a Dresden shepherdess. Sofia stared after him, her hands clenched, breathing hard. Harry touched her shoulder.

‘Sofia, I’m so sorry—’

She thrust his hand away and turned into the crowd. The press of people stopped her from walking faster than a shuffle and Harry quickly caught her up.

‘Sofia, Sofia, I’m sorry.’ Gently he turned her round to face him. ‘He’s a pig, a brute, insulting you like that.’

To his surprise she laughed, harshly and bitterly. ‘Do you think people like me aren’t used to insults from people like him? Do you think I care what that old shit says?’

‘Then what?’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, you don’t understand, we talk of these things but you don’t understand.’

He fumbled for her hands, clutched at them. People were staring but he didn’t care. ‘I want to understand.’

She took a deep breath. She pulled away from his grip. ‘We’d better walk on, we’re offending public morals.’

‘All right.’ He fell into step beside her. She looked up at him.

‘I have heard of that man. General Maestre. His was one of the names we feared during the Siege. They say in one village he ordered all the Socialist councillors’ wives brought into the town square and got the Moors to tie them up and cut off their breasts in front of their men. I know there was a lot of propaganda but I nursed a man from that village, he said it was true. And when they occupied Madrid last year, Maestre had a big part in rounding up subversives. Not just Communists; people who only ever wanted a secure peaceful life, a share of their country.’ Harry saw she was crying, tears running down her face. ‘The cleansing, they called it. Night after night you could hear the shots from the east cemetery. You still can sometimes. They took this city like an occupying army and that’s how they still hold it. And the Falange strutting and rampaging over our city—’

They had reached a quieter area. Sofia came to a sudden halt. She took a deep breath and wiped her face with a handkerchief. Harry stood looking at her. There was nothing he could say. She touched his arm. ‘I know you try to understand,’ she said. ‘But then I see you talking to that creature. You have come to visit this – this hell – from another world, Harry. You will stay a while and then go back.’ She bent her head. ‘Take me back to your flat, Harry, let’s make love. At least we can make love. I don’t want to talk more now.’

They walked on without talking, back to Plaza de Cascorro where the market began. As they threaded their way through the square Harry thought, what if I could get her out, get her to England. But how? She’d never leave her mother and Enrique and Paco and how could I get them out too? She walked ahead of him, shoving her way through the crowds, strong and indomitable but so small, so vulnerable in this city ruled by the generals that Hoare and Hillgarth plied with the Knights of St George.

Chapter Thirty-Three

IN THE TIERRA MUERTA the weather had turned bad. One morning the camp woke to find everything covered in snow, even the steep roofs of the watchtowers. The snow was thick on the mountain path to the quarry, soaking through the prisoners’ cracked old boots. Bernie remembered his mother, when he was a child, saying he must be sure never to get his feet wet in the winter, it was a sure way to catch a cold. He laughed aloud and Pablo turned and gave him an odd look.

The men stopped for their brief rest at the fold in the hills from which, if conditions were right, Cuenca appeared in the distance. You couldn’t see anything today, only a glimpse of the brown cliff of the gorge between the white hills and the cold milky sky.

‘Come on, you lazy bastards!’ the guard called. The men stamped their feet to restore the circulation and got back into line.

Vicente was dying. The authorities had seen enough deaths to know when someone was on the way out and had stopped trying to make him work. For the last two days he had lain on his pallet in the hut, drifting in and out of consciousness. Whenever he woke he begged for water, saying his head and throat were on fire.

That night a strong wind came in from the west, bringing a heavy sleety rain that melted the snow. It was still raining heavily next morning, the wind driving it across the yard in vertical sheets. The men were told there would be no work parties that day: the guards don’t fancy a day out in this, Bernie thought. The storm continued; the men stayed in their huts and played cards or sewed or read the Catholic tracts and copies of Arriba that were all they were allowed.

Bernie knew the Communist group had held a meeting to discuss him a couple of days before. Since then they had avoided him, even Pablo, but they didn’t say what they had decided. Bernie guessed they were waiting till Vicente died, giving him a short period of grace.

The lawyer slept most of the morning but woke towards noon. He made a croaking sound. Bernie had been lying on his pallet but got up and leaned over him. Vicente was very thin now, his eyes sunk deep inside black circles. ‘Water,’ he croaked.

‘I’ll get some, wait a minute.’ Bernie put on his old patched army greatcoat and went out into the rain, wincing as pellets of sleet blew into his face. There was no water supply to the huts and he had carefully cleaned out his piss-bucket, leaving it out overnight to catch the rain. It was almost full. He carried it in, scooped some water into a tin cup, then gently lifted the lawyer’s head so he could drink. Establo, lying on the opposite bed, laughed throatily. ‘Ay, inglés, do you make the poor man drink your piss?’

Vicente leaned back; even the effort of drinking exhausted him. ‘Thanks.’

‘How are you?’

‘A lot of pain. I wish it was over. I think, no more quarry, no more Sunday services. I’m so tired. Ready for the endless silence.’ Bernie didn’t reply. Vicente smiled tiredly. ‘Just now I was dreaming about when we first came here. Do you remember, that lorry? How it jolted?’

‘Yes.’

After Bernie’s capture he had spent many months at the San Pedro de Cardena prison, where the first psychiatric tests had been done. By then most of the English prisoners had been repatriated through diplomatic channels, but not him. Then in late 1937 he had been transferred, along with a mixture of Spanish and foreign prisoners considered politically dangerous, to the Tierra Muerta camp. Bernie wondered whether his party membership was the reason the embassy hadn’t petitioned for his release; surely his mother would have tried to get him out when she learned he was a prisoner.

They were driven to the Tierra Muerta in old army lorries and Vicente was shackled next to him on the bench. He asked Bernie where he was from and soon they were engaged in an argument about communism. Bernie liked Vicente’s wry sense of humour, and he had always had that soft spot for bourgeois intellectuals.

A few days after their arrival at the Tierra Muerta, Vicente sought him out. The lawyer had been delegated to help the administration with the mountain of forms involved in inducting prisoners into the new camp. Bernie was sitting on a bench in the yard. Vicente sat beside him and lowered his voice.

‘You remember you told me how the other English prisoners have gone home; you thought your embassy were not troubling themselves with you because you are a Communist?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is not the reason. I had a look at your dossier today. The English think you are dead.’

Bernie was astonished. ‘What?’

‘When you were captured on the Jarama, what happened exactly?’

Bernie frowned. ‘I was unconscious for a while. Then I was taken by a Fascist patrol.’

‘They asked you the usual things? Name, nationality, political affiliation?’

‘Yes, the sergeant who captured me took some notes. He was a bastard. He was going to shoot me but his corporal persuaded him not to, he said there could be trouble since I was a foreigner.’

Vicente nodded slowly. ‘I think he was more of a bastard than you realized. Embassies of foreign prisoners of war should always be informed of their capture. But according to your dossier, you were put down as a Spaniard. You were given a twenty-five-year sentence by a military court under that Spanish name, with a batch of others. The authorities didn’t find out the error till later; they decided to leave things as they were.’

Bernie stared into the distance. ‘Then my parents think I’m dead?’

‘You would have been reported as missing believed killed by your own side. I would guess the sergeant who captured you gave false details precisely so your embassy wouldn’t be told you had been captured. Out of malice.’

‘Why was it never put right?’

Vicente spread his hands. ‘Probably just bureaucratic inertia. The longer it was left before they were notified, the more fuss your embassy might make. I suspect you became a nuisance, an anomaly. So they have buried you away here.’

‘What if I said something now?’

Vicente shook his head. ‘It would do no good.’ He looked at him seriously. ‘They might shoot you to get rid of the anomaly. We have no rights here, we are nothing.’

VICENTE SLEPT for the rest of the day, occasionally waking and asking for water. Then, that evening, Father Eduardo came. Bernie saw him crossing the yard through the wind and rain, clutching his heavy black cloak around him. He entered the hut, dripping water on to the bare boards.

Father Jaime would have crossed straight to the bed of the sick man, ignoring the others, but Father Eduardo always sought to make contact with the prisoners. He looked round the hut with a nervous smile. ‘Ay, what a storm,’ he said. Some men stared at him coldly, others went back to their reading or sewing. Then the priest walked towards Vicente’s pallet. Bernie got up and stood barring his way.

‘He does not want to see you, father,’ he said quietly.

‘I have to talk to him. It is my duty.’ The priest leaned closer. ‘Listen, Piper. Father Jaime wanted to come but I said I felt this man was my responsibility. Would you rather I fetched him? I do not want to but if you bar my way I must report it, he is the senior priest.’

Wordlessly Bernie stepped aside. He wondered if it might be better to have Father Jaime here, that brutal man might be easier for Vicente to resist.

The noise had woken the lawyer. He stared up as the priest leaned over him. Drops of water fell from the priest’s cloak on to the sackcloth sheet.

‘Is that the holy water, father?’

‘How are you?’

‘Not dead yet. Bernardo, amigo, will you give me more water?’

Bernie dipped the cup in the pail and passed it to Vicente. He drank greedily. The priest glanced at the piss-pail with distaste. ‘Señor, you are very ill,’ he said. ‘You should make confession.’

There was complete silence in the hut. All the prisoners were watching and listening, their faces dim white circles in the weak candlelight. Everyone knew Vicente hated the priests, had known this moment was coming.

‘No.’ Vicente managed to raise himself a little. The light glinted on the grey stubble on his cheeks and his weary, angry eyes. ‘No.’

‘If you die unconfessed, your soul will go to Hell.’ Father Eduardo was uneasy, twisting a button on his sotana. His spectacles reflected the candlelight, turning his sad eyes into two little fires.

Vicente ran his tongue over dry lips. ‘No hell,’ he gasped. ‘Only – silence.’ He coughed, then began to make a gurgling noise in his throat. He lay back, exhausted. Father Eduardo sighed and turned away. He whispered to Bernie, bending close. He gave off a faint smell of incense and oil.

‘I think this man has only a day or two. I will again come tomorrow. But listen, is that piss-pail all you have to give him water?’

‘I cleaned it out.’

‘All the same, to have to use that. And where did you get the water?’

‘It’s rainwater.’

‘The rain won’t go on for ever. Listen, I have a tap in the church, and a bucket. Come tomorrow and I’ll give you some water.’

‘You won’t worm your way into his confidence that way.’

‘I do not want to see him suffer more than he should!’ Father Eduardo said with sudden anger. ‘Come or not as you please, but there is water if you want it.’ He turned on his heel and marched out of the hut, back into the storm. Bernie turned back to Vicente.

‘He’s gone.’

The lawyer smiled bitterly. ‘I was strong, Bernardo, wasn’t I?’

‘Yes, yes you were. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.’

‘You helped distract him. I know there is only nothingness ahead. I embrace it.’ Vicente took a gasping breath. ‘I was trying to work up enough phlegm to spit at him. If he comes again I shall.’

THAT NIGHT the wind veered round to the east and it snowed again. The following morning was bitterly cold. The wind had dropped; the snow lay thick and noises in the camp were muffled, the men’s feet making a creaking sound as they lined up for roll-call. Aranda didn’t like the cold weather; he went round muffled in a balaclava helmet that looked odd with his immaculate uniform.

It was Sunday and there was no labour detail. After roll-call some of the prisoners were set clearing the snow from the yard, sweeping it into great piles against the huts. Vicente had woken with a raging thirst. Bernie had set the pail outside before going to bed and it was full of snow. He looked at it. It would take ages to melt in the cold hut and even then it would only be a quarter full. He stood a moment, shivering in the icy morning, the old wounds in his shoulder and thigh aching. He looked across to the hut housing the church, a cross painted on its side. He hesitated, then walked towards it.

Aranda stood in the doorway of his hut, watching the snow-clearing detail. He stared at Bernie as he passed. Bernie walked through the church and knocked at the office door. Inside a large stove was burning, the warm air was like a balm. Father Jaime stood beside it warming his hands while Father Eduardo worked at the desk. The older priest looked at Bernie suspiciously.

‘What do you want?’

‘This man and I are having some discussions,’ Father Eduardo said. Father Jaime raised his bushy eyebrows.

‘This one? He’s a Communist. Has he taken confession?’

‘Not yet.’

Father Jaime wrinkled his nose with distaste. ‘I left my missal in my room. I must fetch it. The air in here is not what it was.’ He rustled past, closing the door with a snap. Bernie looked at Father Eduardo with raised eyebrows.

‘Telling a lie to your superior, isn’t that a venial sin or something?’

‘It was not a lie. We have talked, haven’t we?’ Father Eduardo sighed. ‘You’re quite implacable, Piper, aren’t you?’

‘I’ve come for the water.’

‘Over there.’ The priest nodded to a tap in the corner. A clean steel bucket lay underneath. Bernie filled it, then turned back to Father Eduardo.

‘I wouldn’t put it past you to have put a drop of holy water in the bottom of the bucket this morning and then blessed it.’

Father Eduardo shook his head. ‘You know so little of what we believe. You know how to fashion shafts that bite, but one does not need to see deeply to do that.’

‘At least I don’t plague people’s last hours, father. Adíos.’ Bernie turned and left.

The yard was almost clear of snow now; the men were piling their shovels against the wall of the comandante’s hut. Halfway across Bernie heard a shout.

‘You there! ¡Inglés!’

Aranda descended the steps of his hut and walked towards him. Bernie put down the bucket and stood to attention. The comandante halted in front of him, frowning angrily.

‘What is in that bucket?’

‘Water, señor comandante. There is a man ill in my hut. Father Eduardo said I could take some water from the church tap.’

‘That stupid pansy. The sooner the abogado dies the better.’

Bernie sensed Aranda was bored and trying to provoke a reaction. He looked at the ground.

‘I do not believe in softness.’ Aranda kicked the bucket over with his booted foot, the water splashing out over the earth. He smiled. ‘I say, ¡Viva la Muerte! Take that pail back to the pansy priest. I will have a word with Father Jaime about this. Go on!’

Bernie picked up the bucket and walked slowly back to the hut. He felt anger but also relief. He had got off lightly. Aranda was in a mood to persecute someone.

He told the priest what Aranda had said. ‘He says he’s going to report you to Father Jaime.’

‘He is a hard man.’ Father Eduardo shrugged.

Bernie turned to go. ‘Wait,’ the priest said. He was still looking out of the window. ‘He is going back inside his hut.’ He turned to Bernie. ‘Listen, I know him, he will go and warm himself at the stove now. It is at the back of his hut. Fill the bucket again and go quickly, he won’t see you.’

Bernie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘I saw your friend desperate for water and I wanted to help. That is all.’

‘Then leave him in peace. Don’t trouble his last hours for the million to one chance he’ll repent.’

The priest did not reply. Bernie refilled the bucket and left the hut without another word. His heart pounded as he crossed the yard. He and the priest were both mad. If Aranda saw he’d been disobeyed he’d go berserk.

He reached the hut safely, shutting the door behind him. He went up to Vicente’s bed. ‘Water, amigo,’ he said. ‘Courtesy of the church.’

THE PRIEST came again that afternoon. Most of the men who were fit, tired of being cooped up, had gone outside and were playing a desultory game of football in the yard. Vicente was delirious, he seemed to imagine himself back in his office in Madrid, and kept muttering to someone to bring him a file and open the window, he was too hot. He was covered in sweat although the hut was freezing cold. Bernie sat beside him, wiping his face now and then with a corner of the sheet. On the bed opposite Establo lay smoking, watching them. He seldom went outside now.

Bernie heard a rustle at his elbow and turned. Father Eduardo was there; he must have come in quietly.

‘He’s in a dream, father,’ Bernie whispered. ‘Leave him, he’s far away from this place.’

The priest put a box on the bed, a box of oils Bernie supposed. His heart thumped; the moment had come. Father Eduardo leaned over and touched Vicente’s brow. The lawyer grimaced and flinched away, then slowly opened his eyes. He took a deep rattling breath.

‘Mierda. You again.’

Father Eduardo took a deep breath. ‘I think your hour is close. You have been slipping into dreams and next time you may not return. Even now, Señor Vicente, God will receive you into eternal life.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ Bernie said.

Vicente gave a ghastly rictus of a smile, exposing pale gums. ‘Don’t worry, compadre. Give me some water.’

Bernie helped Vicente to drink. He took long slow sips, his eyes never leaving the priest, then lay back gasping.

‘Please.’ There was a pleading note in Father Eduardo’s voice. ‘You have a chance of eternal life. Don’t throw it away.’

Vicente began to make a gurgling noise in his throat. The priest spoke again.

‘If you do not take this last chance, you must go to Hell. That is what is written.’

Vicente’s throat was working, he gurgled and spluttered. Bernie knew what he was trying to do. The priest leaned forward and Vicente took a deep breath but the phlegm he had been working slipped down his throat. He coughed, then started choking, gasping frantically for breath. He sat up, his face red, heaving for air. Bernie reached over and slapped him on the back. Vicente’s eyes bulged as he gagged and retched. Then a spasm ran through his wasted body and he fell back on the pallet. A long gurgling sigh came from his throat, a sound of terrible weariness. Bernie saw the expression leach out of his eyes. He was dead. The priest sank to his knees and began to pray.

Bernie sat on the bed. His legs were shaking. After a minute Father Eduardo rose and crossed himself. Bernie looked at him coldly.

‘He was trying to spit at you, father, did you realize?’

The priest shook his head.

‘You threatened him with Hell and he tried to spit at you and choked on it. You gave him his death.’

The priest looked at Vicente’s body then shook his head and turned away, walking down the hut. Bernie shouted after him.

‘Don’t worry, father, he’s not in Hell. He’s out of it!’

VICENTE WAS buried the next day. As he had not received the last rites there could be no church ceremony. Vicente would have been pleased. Bernie trudged through the snow behind the digging detail that carried the body, sewn into an old sheet, to the hillside where the graves were. He watched as it was lowered into a shallow grave that had been dug that morning. ‘Adíos, compadre,’ he muttered quietly. He felt very alone.

The guard accompanying them crossed himself and signalled with his rifle for Bernie to return to the camp. The digging detail began filling in the grave, struggling with the frozen earth. It began to snow again, white heavy flakes. Bernie thought, Father Eduardo will be thinking you’re in the eternal fire, but really you’re going to be encased in ice. The joke would have amused Vicente.

THAT AFTERNOON Bernie was leaning against the wall of the hut, smoking a cigarette one of the digging party had given him out of kindness, when Pablo came up to him. He looked uncomfortable.

‘I’ve been detailed to speak to you, on behalf of the party cell,’ he said.

Because you were my friend, Bernie thought, to show me Establo’s brought everyone into line.

‘You have been found guilty of incorrigible bourgeois individualism and resistance to authority,’ Pablo said woodenly. ‘You are expelled from the party, and warned if you make any attempts to sabotage our cell, measures will be taken.’ Bernie knew what that meant; a knife thrust in the dark; it had happened before among the prisoners.

‘I’m a loyal Communist and I always have been,’ he said. ‘I don’t accept Establo’s authority to lead us. One day I shall take my case to the Central Committee.’

Pablo lowered his voice. ‘Why do you make trouble? Why be so obstinate? You are obstinate, Bernardo. People say you only became friends with the lawyer to annoy us.’

Bernie smiled bitterly. ‘Vicente was an honest man. I admired him.’

‘What was the point of making all that trouble with the priest? These things cause trouble. There’s no point arguing with the priests. Establo’s right, it’s just bourgeois individualism.’

‘Then what do we do? How do we resist?’

‘We keep strong, united. One day fascism will fall.’ Pablo winced and scratched at his wrist. Perhaps he had scabies – that was a risk if you were round Establo too much.

‘One thing more, Establo wants you out of the hut. He wants you to apply for a transfer, say being in the hut is hard after your friend’s death.’

Bernie shrugged. ‘They may not let me move.’

‘Establo said you must.’

‘I’ll ask, comrade.’ Bernie put a bitter emphasis on the last word.

Pablo turned away. Bernie watched him go. And if I don’t get a transfer, he thought, which I probably won’t, Establo will say I’m making more trouble by staying. He’s got it all worked out. He looked through the wire at the hill where Vicente was buried, a brown slash in the snow. He thought he wouldn’t mind joining him under the earth. Then he set his lips. While he lived he would fight. That was what a real Communist did.

Chapter Thirty-Four

THERE WAS AN uneasy atmosphere round the dinner table. Sandy and Barbara were both smoking constantly, lighting up between courses. Sandy was unusually quiet, withdrawing into little silences, while Barbara’s attempts at conversation seemed nervous and brittle, and once or twice she looked at Sandy strangely. They seemed to Harry to be distant from each other, oddly disconnected. The atmosphere made Harry feel nervous, uneasy. He couldn’t stop looking at Sandy’s preoccupied, slightly surly face and thinking, what happened to Gomez? What have you done to him?

The spies knew he had been invited for dinner at Sandy’s again and he had had an interview with Hillgarth that afternoon. He hadn’t seen him for over a week. The captain’s office was at the rear of the embassy, an area Harry had never visited. A business-like female secretary led him into a large room with high coved ceilings. Framed photographs of battleships lined the walls; on a shelf, beside Whitaker’s Almanac and Jane’s Fighting Ships, were bound copies of Hillgarth’s novels. Harry remembered one or two titles he had seen Sandy reading at school: The Princess and the Perjurer, The War Maker.

Hillgarth sat behind a big oak desk. His face wore a heavy, frowning expression; there was anger in the large expressive eyes although his tone was quiet. ‘We’re in trouble with Maestre,’ he began. ‘He’s bloody furious. He and some of his Monarchist chums were spying at that bloody mine and Gomez was working for them. It’s a pity you were the one who gave his man away. Maestre wasn’t too pleased with you anyway for leaving his daughter in the lurch. It’s the end of their operation.’

‘Can I ask what’s happened to Gomez, sir? Is he—’

‘Maestre doesn’t know. But he doesn’t expect to see him again. Gomez worked for him for years.’

‘I see.’ Harry felt his stomach sink.

‘At least Forsyth doesn’t seem to be on to you.’ Hillgarth stared at him. ‘So keep stringing him along, agree to invest, and tell me about these reports they talked about when you get them. It’s them I want to see.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sir Sam’s lobbying in London. They may pull the plug on this operation. If they do, or if anything goes wrong, I’ve got a contingency plan for Forsyth.’ He paused. ‘We’ll try to recruit him. We can’t offer him what he’s hoping to make from that mine, but we could maybe bring other pressures to bear. He’s still estranged from his family?’

‘Completely.’

Hillgarth grunted. ‘Nothing we can use there, then. Oh well, we’ll have to see.’ He looked at Harry sharply. ‘You look worried. Don’t like the idea of us putting the squeeze on Forsyth? I’d got the impression you despised him.’

Harry said nothing. Hillgarth went on looking at him. ‘You’re not really cut out for this sort of work, are you, Brett?’

‘No, sir,’ Harry said heavily. ‘I just did what I was asked to do. I’m sorry for what happened to Lieutenant Gomez.’

‘So you should be. But we need you to carry on doing what you’re doing, for now. Afterwards we’ll send you home. Probably quite soon.’ He gave a half smile. ‘I expect that will be a relief, eh?’

PILAR BROUGHT IN the main course: a paella, mussels and prawns and anchovies on a bed of rice. She set the dish on the table and withdrew, avoiding everyone’s eye. Barbara scooped portions onto their plates.

‘It’s a treat getting fresh fish,’ Sandy said, seeming to come to life at the smell of food. He smiled at Harry. ‘There’s less of it around than ever.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘The fishermen get a petrol allowance to run their boats, but the black-market price of petrol’s so astronomical they just sell it on for a huge profit and don’t bother going to sea. That’s what our blockade’s doing, you see.’

‘Can’t the government make them use the petrol for fishing?’

Sandy laughed. ‘No. Even when they do make laws they can’t enforce them. Half the ministers have their noses deep in the trough anyway.’

‘How’s this project going that you’re investing in?’ said Barbara. She gave Harry another strange look.

‘Well—’

Sandy interrupted. ‘Slowly. Nothing happening just now.’

She looked between them for a moment.

‘I had a letter from Will yesterday,’ Harry said. ‘He’s enjoying being in the countryside now.’

‘His wife’ll be pleased to be away from the raids,’ Barbara said.

‘Yes, it’s been too much for her.’ He looked at her seriously. ‘Have you heard about Coventry?’

She took a long drag of her cigarette. Behind her glasses her eyes were tired, little rings around them Harry hadn’t noticed before. ‘Yes. Five hundred killed, the reports said. The city centre flattened.’

‘Those reports in Arriba are exaggerated,’ Sandy said. ‘They always make the bombing sound worse than it is – the Germans tell them what to write.’

‘It was on the BBC.’

‘It’s true all right,’ Harry agreed.

‘Coventry’s only fifteen miles from Birmingham,’ Barbara said. ‘Every time I listen to the BBC I’m frightened of hearing about more raids there. I think my mother’s feeling the strain, from her letters.’ She sighed and smiled at Harry sadly. ‘It’s strange when your parents suddenly seem like frightened old people.’

‘You should go and visit them,’ Sandy said.

She looked up at him in surprise.

‘Why not? You haven’t been home for years. Christmas is coming up. It’d make a nice surprise for them.’

Barbara bit her lip. ‘I just – I don’t think it’s the right time,’ she said.

‘Why ever not? I could get you a place on a plane.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Please yourself.’

Harry looked at Barbara. He wondered why she didn’t want to go. She turned to him. ‘What about you, Harry, will you be getting any Christmas leave?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. They like to keep the translators on tap in case there’s an emergency.’

‘I expect you’d like to see your aunt and uncle.’

‘Yes.’

‘Sandy says you’ve got a girlfriend,’ she said with an effort at brightness. ‘What does she do?’

Harry wished again he hadn’t told Sandy that in the car the day they’d visited the mine. ‘She – she works in the dairy sector.’

‘How long have you been seeing her?’

‘Not long.’ Harry thought back to the previous evening, which he had spent at the Carabanchel flat. Sofia had revealed, quite unexpectedly, that she had told her family they were going out together. Harry had wondered how they would react. Sofia’s mother and Enrique had welcomed him effusively though Harry guessed they were pleased Sofia had found someone rich, even though he was a foreigner. Paco had seemed more at ease and had spoken to Harry for the first time. He had felt strangely privileged.

‘You’ll have to bring her round to dinner,’ Barbara said brightly. ‘Make a foursome.’

‘That’s why you’re not going home for Christmas.’ Sandy pointed a finger at Harry. ‘You sly dog.’ He wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘Where’s the pepper? Pilar’s forgotten it.’

‘I’ll go and get it,’ Barbara said. ‘Excuse me.’

She left the room. Sandy looked at Harry seriously. ‘Wanted to get rid of her for a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid there’s a problem with the mine.’

Harry’s heart began thumping. ‘What is it?’

‘Sebastian’s got cold feet about a foreigner investing. I’m afraid it’s no go.’ He looked downcast.

‘That’s a shame.’ So there would be no reports for Hillgarth after all. ‘I’m surprised, I thought it was Otero that was suspicious.’

Sandy toyed with his crystal wineglass. ‘He’s afraid this supervision committee won’t like the idea of an English investor. They’re putting us – ’ he paused – ‘under pressure.’

‘General Maestre’s committee?’

‘Yes. They’ve a closer eye on us than we thought. They know about you, we think.’

Harry wanted to ask about Gomez but he dared not. ‘You’ll still have problems with funding, then?’

Sandy nodded. ‘The committee are talking about more or less taking the project over. Then bang go our profits. The people on the committee will make a mint of course.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, we’ll make something out of it, I suppose. I’m sorry to let you down.’ He looked at Harry, his brown eyes sad and liquid like a dog’s. How quickly their expression could change.

‘It’s all right. Maybe I’m better off out of it. I’m not sure it was my type of thing.’

‘Good of you to take it like that. Pity, I wanted to do something for you, for – you know, old times’ sake.’

The telephone rang in the hall, making Harry jump. He heard footsteps and Barbara’s voice speaking English. A moment later she returned, her face anxious.

‘Harry, the embassy want to speak to you. They say it’s urgent.’ She looked at him with concern. ‘I hope it’s not bad news from home.’

‘You gave them our number?’ Sandy looked at him sharply.

‘I had to, I’m on call tonight. I have to go in if there’s something needs translating urgently. Excuse me.’

He stepped out into the hall. A little brasero set under the telephone table warmed his feet, casting a yellow glow over the floor. He picked up the phone.

‘Hello. Harry Brett.’

A cultured female voice answered. ‘Oh, Mr Brett, I’m so glad we were able to reach you. I’ve got a caller holding, a Miss Sofia Roque Casas.’ The woman hesitated. ‘She says it’s urgent.’

‘Sofia?’

‘She’s holding now. Do you want to take the call?’

‘Yes. Please, put her on.’

There was a click and for a moment Harry thought he had lost the connection, then Sofia came on. It seemed strange, hearing her voice there in Sandy’s hall.

‘Harry, Harry is that you?’ There was panic in her voice, normally so composed.

‘Yes. Sofia, what is it?’

‘It’s Mama. I think she has had another stroke. Enrique’s gone out, I’m alone. Paco is in a terrible state, he saw it. Harry, can you come?’ He heard tears in her voice.

‘A stroke?’

‘I think so. She is unconscious.’

‘I’ll come at once. Where are you?’

‘I walked two blocks to find a telephone. I’m sorry, I couldn’t think what else to do. Oh, Harry, she is bad.’

He thought a moment. ‘OK. Go back to the flat, I’ll get there as soon as I can. When’s Enrique back?’

‘Not till late. He has gone out with some friends.’

‘Listen, I’m in Vigo district. I’ll try and find a cab and get there as soon as I can. Get back to your mother and Paco.’

‘Please hurry, please hurry.’ It was frightening to hear the panic in her voice. ‘I knew you’d come,’ she added quickly, then there was a click as she replaced the receiver.

The salón door opened and Barbara put her head out. ‘What is it? Did you say someone’s had a stroke? Is it your uncle?’

He took a deep breath. ‘No, it’s Sofia’s mother, my – my girlfriend.’ He followed Barbara back into the dining room. ‘She rang the embassy and they put the call through here. She’s alone with her mother and a little boy they look after. I have to go there now.’

Sandy looked at him curiously. ‘Can’t they get a doctor?’

‘They can’t afford one.’ He must have sounded snappy because Sandy raised his hand.

‘All right, old boy, all right.’

‘Can I call a cab from here?’ Harry had taken a tram to the house.

‘It’ll take ages at this time of night. Where do they live?’

He hesitated. ‘Carabanchel.’

‘Carabanchel?’ Sandy raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes.’

Barbara’s voice was suddenly decisive. ‘I’ll drive you. If this poor woman’s had a stroke, I might be able to help.’

‘Sofia was a medical student once. But you could help. Do you mind?’

‘It’s not safe taking the car down there,’ Sandy said. ‘We can call a cab.’

‘I’ll be all right.’ Barbara stepped to the door. ‘Come on, I’ll get the keys.’

Harry followed her. In the doorway he turned back. Sandy was still sitting at the table. His expression was angry, petulant. He had always hated being ignored.

THE NIGHT WAS cold and clear. Barbara drove fast and well, through the city centre and into the dark narrow streets of the working-class districts. She seemed relieved to be out of the house. She looked at him curiously. ‘I didn’t realize Sofia was from Carabanchel.’

‘You were expecting someone middle class?’

‘I suppose I was, subconsciously.’ Barbara smiled sadly. ‘I should know it’s unpredictable who we fall in love with.’ She gave him another searching look. ‘Is she special?’

‘Yes.’ Harry hesitated. ‘I wondered for a while if it was – oh, I don’t know, guilt or something, wanting to experience how ordinary Spaniards live.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh.

‘Going native?’

‘Something like that. But it’s just – it’s just love. You know?’

‘I know.’ She hesitated. ‘What do the embassy think?’

‘I haven’t told them. I want some part of my life to myself. It’s here, the next street.’

They parked the Packard outside Sofia’s block and hurried inside, running up the dark staircase. Sofia had heard them coming and stood in her doorway, weak yellow light shining into the hall. The sound of a child’s hysterical crying came from inside. Sofia looked pale and her hair was lank and uncombed. She stared at Barbara. ‘Who is this?’

‘Barbara, she’s the wife of a friend of mine. We were all having dinner together. She’s a nurse, perhaps she can help.’

Sofia’s shoulders slumped. ‘It is too late. Mama has gone. She was dead when I got back from telephoning you.’

She led them in. The old woman lay on the bed. Her eyes had been closed and her white face looked still and peaceful. Paco lay on top of the body, clinging to it tightly, sobbing, a wild keening noise. He looked up as the three of them came into the room, eyeing Barbara with fear. Sofia went over and stroked his hair.

‘It’s all right, Paco, this lady is a friend of Harry’s. She’s come to help us. She is not from the Church. Please, come away now.’ She lifted him gently from the body and held him to her. They sat on the bed, both crying now. Harry sat beside them, putting his arm round Sofia.

Paco stood up. He looked at Barbara, still afraid. She went over and very gently took his small dirty hand in hers.

‘Hello, Paco,’ she said in Spanish. ‘May I call you Paco?’ He nodded dumbly. ‘Listen, Paco, Sofia is very upset. You must try to be a big boy if you can. I know it’s difficult. Here, come and sit by me.’ Paco let her lead him gently away from the bed. She sat him on one of the spindly chairs and pulled up another to sit next to him.

Sofia, still holding Harry tightly, looked at her mother’s body. ‘I thought this might happen and that it would be best for her but it is hard. I should call an ambulance, we cannot leave her here.’

‘Won’t Enrique want to see her?’ Harry asked.

‘I think maybe it is better he does not.’ She got up and went to get her coat from behind the door.

‘Let me go,’ Harry said.

Barbara stood up. ‘No, stay with Sofia. I saw a phone box nearby, on the way. I’ll go.’

‘You should not go alone,’ Sofia said.

‘I’ve been in tougher places than this. Please let me go.’ She sounded brisk, business-like, wanting to be of service. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ Before they could argue further she was gone, her footsteps clattering down the steps. Sofia took Paco’s hand and led him back to sit on the bed with them. She looked at Elena’s still face.

‘She had been very tired recently,’ Sofia whispered. ‘Then this evening after dinner she cried out, a horrible groaning noise. When I went over to her she was unconscious. Then after I came back from telephoning you she had gone. I left poor Paco alone with her.’ She kissed the boy’s head. ‘I should not have; I should have been here.’

‘You did all you could.’

‘It is better this way,’ she said again, dully. ‘Sometimes she used to wet the bed. It upset her terribly, she would cry.’ She shook her head. ‘You should have known Mama before she was ill, she was so strong, she took care of us all. Papa did not want me to go to university but Mama always supported me.’ She looked over at the photograph, her mother in her wedding dress, standing between her husband and her brother the priest, all of them smiling into the camera.

Harry held her tightly. ‘Poor Sofia. I don’t know how you’ve endured it all.’ She held him tightly. At length there were footsteps on the stairs. ‘Here’s Barbara,’ Harry said. ‘She’ll have sorted something out.’

She looked at him. ‘You know her well?’

He kissed her forehead. ‘For a long time. But only as a friend.’

Barbara came in, her face red from the cold. ‘I got through to the hospital. They’re sending an ambulance, but it may be some time.’ She produced a paper bag from her coat. ‘I stopped at a bodega, got us some brandy. I thought we could all do with some.’

‘Oh, well done,’ Harry said.

Sofia fetched some tumblers and Barbara poured them each a stiff measure. Paco, curious, asked for some, and they gave him a little mixed with water. He screwed up his face. ‘Ugh,’ he said. ‘¡Es horroroso!’ It broke the tension and they all laughed, a little hysterically.

‘It is not respectful we should laugh,’ Sofia said guiltily.

‘Sometimes you just have to,’ Barbara said. She looked round the flat, taking in the damp-stained walls and the broken-down furniture, then lowering her eyes guiltily as she saw Sofia studying her.

‘You are a nurse, senõra?’ Sofia added. ‘Do you work as a nurse here?’

‘No, not now. I’m – I’m married to a British businessman. He went to school with Harry.’

‘Barbara did some voluntary work at one of the church orphanages,’ Harry said. ‘She couldn’t stand it.’

‘No, it was an awful place.’ Barbara smiled at Sofia. ‘Harry said you trained as a medical student.’

‘Yes, until the Civil War came. Do you have women doctors in England?’

‘Some. Not many.’

‘There were three of us in my year at university. Sometimes the teachers did not know what to make of us. You could see they were embarrassed at the things they had to show us.’

Barbara smiled. ‘Not ladylike?’

‘Yes. Though in the war everyone saw such things.’

‘I know. I was in Madrid for a while, working for the Red Cross.’ She turned to Paco. ‘How old are you, ninõ?’

‘Ten.’

‘Do you go to school?’

He shook his head.

‘He couldn’t cope,’ Sofia said. ‘Besides, the new schools are useless, full of Nationalist veterans without teaching experience. I try to teach him at home.’

There were footsteps on the stairs, heavy male footsteps. Sofia drew her breath in sharply. ‘That will be Enrique.’ She got up. ‘Let me speak to him alone. Would you take Paco into the kitchen, please.’

‘Come on, young man.’ Barbara took the boy’s hand and Harry followed her. He lit the stove; Barbara pointed to a book on the table to distract Paco as a murmur of voices came from outside. The book had a green cover, a picture of a boy and girl walking together to school.

‘What is that book?’

Paco bit his lip, listening to the voices outside. Harry heard Enrique’s voice, a sudden anguished cry.

‘What is it?’ Barbara went on, trying to distract him.

‘My old schoolbook. From when I went to school before Mama and Papa were taken. I liked it.’

Barbara opened it and pushed it towards him. They could hear crying outside, a man crying. Paco looked at the door again. ‘Show me,’ Barbara said gently. ‘Just for a few minutes. It is good to leave Sofia and Enrique together for a little.’

‘I remember that book,’ she added. ‘The Meras showed it to me once. Carmel had a copy.’ Her eyes filled with tears. Harry realized that behind the forced brightness she was at the end of her tether. She turned to Paco. ‘Look at all the sections. History, geography, arithmetic.’

‘I used to like geography,’ Paco said. ‘Look at the pictures, all the countries in the world.’

It was quiet again outside. Harry got up. ‘I’ll see how they are. Stay with Paco.’ He squeezed Barbara’s shoulder and went back into the main room. Enrique was sitting on the bed with Sofia. He looked up at Harry, a bitter expression Harry had never seen before on his pale tear-stained face, making it ugly.

‘You see all our family dramas, inglés.’

‘I’m sorry, Enrique.’

‘It’s not Harry’s fault,’ Sofia said.

‘If only he could see us with some dignity. We had dignity once, senõr, you know that?’

There was a knock at the door. Sofia sighed. ‘That must be the ambulance.’ But as she approached the door it opened and Senõra Avila’s thin face peered in. She wore a black shawl round her head, the ends held tightly in her hand.

‘Pardon me, but I heard crying, is something wrong – oh.’ She saw the body on the bed and crossed herself. ‘Oh, poor Senõra Roque. Poor lady. But she is at peace now, with God.’ She looked curiously at Harry.

Sofia stood up. ‘Senõra Avila, we would rather be alone, please. We are waiting for them to take our mother away.’

The beata looked round the room. ‘Where is Paco? The pobrecito.’

‘In the kitchen. With another friend.’

‘You should have a priest at this time,’ the old woman said wheedlingly. ‘Let me fetch Padre Fernando.’

Something seemed to snap inside Sofia. Harry felt it almost physically, as though a crack had sounded in the room. She stood up and marched up to Senõra Avila. The older woman was taller but she flinched back.

‘Listen to me, you old vulture, we do not want Padre Fernando here!’ Sofia’s voice rose to a shout. ‘However long you try to sneak him into our house, however long you try to get hold of Paco, you will never succeed! You are not welcome here, do you understand? Now go!’

Senõra Avila drew herself up to her full height, her pale face reddening.

‘This is how you greet a neighbour who comes to help you, this is how you greet Christian charity? Padre Fernando is right, you are enemies of the church—’

Enrique got up from the bed. He crossed to Senõra Avila, his hands clenched into fists. The beata backed away.

‘Go and denounce us to the priest then, you dried-up old bitch! You who got a whole flat to yourself because your priest is friends with the block leader!’

‘My father was killed by the Communists,’ the beata replied shakily. ‘I had nowhere.’

‘I spit on your father! Get out!’ Enrique raised a fist. Senõra Avila gave a cry and ran out of the flat, slamming the door. Enrique sat down on the foot of the bed, breathing in great gasps. Sofia sat wearily next to him. Barbara came out and stood in the kitchen doorway.

‘I’m sorry,’ Enrique said. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at her.’

‘It doesn’t matter. If she reports us we can say you were overcome with grief.’

Enrique bowed his head, clasping his bony hands together on his knees. From somewhere outside Harry heard a faint howling sound. It grew louder, seeming to come from a dozen places at once.

‘What on earth is that?’ Barbara asked, her voice shaky.

Sofia looked up. ‘The dogs. The wild dogs. At this time of year they sometimes howl with cold. It is a sign winter is truly here.’