Authors: David Roberts
Amid the turmoil, Edward saw the figure of James Lyall limp towards them.
‘I think they’re gone,’ he gasped, coughing in the smoke that swirled about them.
He spoke too soon. They could not see it but they could hear it – another plane – a fighter. It roared over their heads, its machine-guns blazing. They all ducked, pointless though this was, and Edward saw a scatter of lights as the bullets raced like a burning fuse towards a group of militiamen huddled behind a stone drinking trough. One of the men did not move quickly enough and was thrown backward by the bullets which tore apart his head and chest. With a cry, Verity began to run across the square followed by Gerda, trying to ready her camera as she ran. Then Edward heard the drone of yet another plane. ‘Come back!’ he screamed but no one could have heard him. Once again he watched the tracery of light – so beautiful and yet so deadly – rake the square and race the two women to the stone trough. There could only be one winner and Edward watched in horror as both Gerda and Verity dropped to the ground like puppets whose strings had been cut. They tumbled among the mangled sheep and lay still. By the time Edward and James reached them, it was too late to do anything but gather them up into their arms and carry them out of the maelstrom into the shelter of a ruined house. As Edward clasped Verity to him, he knew this was what he had feared so much. It had come to pass as he knew it must and it was cold comfort – but comfort nevertheless – that he was with her. Panting, they laid the two women beside each other. Edward’s heart leapt. Verity was unconscious but breathing. She was bleeding from the shoulder and there was a bad gash on her forehead but she was alive. He looked across at Lyall who was cradling Gerda. He raised his eyes to Edward’s. ‘She’s dead. Look, her stomach . . .’
Edward turned away his head, the bile rising in his throat. To see that beautiful girl, her monkey face and green eyes alight with mischief, reduced to a bleeding piece of meat was almost unbearable. A moment ago she had been running and now she was dead. It did not seem possible that life could be snuffed out so quickly. She still had in her hand the camera she had been carrying as she raced across the marketplace. He took it from her knowing that the one thing she would have wanted above all was that her work should be saved. More powerful than a bookful of words, despite his churlish remarks in the gallery when he had first seen her images of war, her photographs would speak of what she had seen. They would survive her and be her witness and her memorial. He would see to that. She had said that to get the picture which made people stop and take notice, she had to get close and ‘close’ meant danger. She had died as perhaps she might have wished, getting close. He murmured the words from
Antony and Cleopatra
which Winston Churchill had used at Chartwell: ‘Finish, good lady. The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.’
He got to his feet and found that André Kavan was there. He gave Edward a look which seemed to be full of hatred, as though he held him in some way responsible for her death. He put out his hand for Gerda’s Leica and Edward gave it to him. It was his by right. He stepped aside and went back to Verity. James was using his bandana as a rough bandage. Verity moaned and tried to move but Edward hushed her.
‘You’ve been wounded. You are bleeding and you must lie still until I find a doctor.’
She seemed to understand because she lay back again, her eyes still closed. Where amongst all this carnage, Edward wondered, would he find a doctor? James, as though reading his thoughts, said, ‘Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute or two. I know where the doctor is. I will fetch him.’ Then he smiled a sweet smile, ‘Don’t worry. Verity will be all right.’
But Gerda. She was dead and Edward found he mourned her as he would have mourned a lover.
Ten minutes later, three more planes – Junkers this time – rained down bombs and incendiaries. And so, for three more hours, it continued. Even after dusk the wooden houses, burning like beacons, lighted the pilots to the pyre that was Guernica. The hospital was hit, killing twenty-five children and two nuns. When dawn came the town was a scene of utter desolation. Nothing remained unscathed except, miraculously, the Casa de Juntas with its ancient oak trees, and the church of Santa María, though its beautiful chapter house had been consumed by the fire. A long and weary trail of refugees pushing wheelbarrows or handcarts, some with a donkey or pony to aid them, wound down the road towards Bilbao. It was a sight with which the world was to become only too familiar in the years ahead but as yet was not hardened to such a spectacle.
As one German officer put it, the bombing of Guernica was ‘a complete success for the Luftwaffe’.
Verity was sitting up in bed reading the newspaper. It was not so easy, given that her back and shoulder were swathed in bandages, but she managed it.
Over a week had passed since Edward and James Lyall had commandeered a car belonging to the mayor of Guernica to transport Verity, still in considerable pain and floating in and out of consciousness, down the column of refugees to Bilbao. André and Edward had found a simple wooden coffin in the crypt of the church of Santa Maria and had laid Gerda’s body in it, nailed down the lid and strapped it to the roof of the car. Edward insisted James accompany them, using the excuse that, without him in his militia uniform, they would never make it to the city. Edward knew that, if the boy stayed at his post, he would be captured and almost certainly killed. When General Mola’s troops entered Guernica just three days after its destruction from the air, they found it deserted.
Bilbao was in chaos, its hospitals full, its streets cratered and many of its buildings destroyed. It had been continually bombed for ten days and, with no big guns or aircraft to protect it, the city seemed likely to fall to the enemy within days. In fact, it was so fiercely defended it held out for two more months. Edward discovered that Captain Roberts was preparing to take his little ship, the
Seven Seas Spray,
back to England and would be happy to take them with him, along with other refugees. André did not accompany them. He insisted on taking Gerda’s body over the frontier into France, which he did with great difficulty. He said that France, not England, was their home and that he would have her buried in Paris, a city she had always loved.
David Griffiths-Jones was said to be back in Madrid. He was certainly not in evidence in Bilbao. Edward absolutely insisted that James return with them to England. James said his duty was still with the Republicans in Spain but Edward informed him – and Verity backed him up – that Griffiths-Jones had specifically told them he was no longer required and was to be shipped home. After much anguishing, he bowed to Edward’s demand. When he was determined to have his way, Edward was not easily denied. Until they were at sea he said nothing to James about his father’s death. He feared that if James knew he was alone in the world, he might give way to despair and prefer to meet his fate in Spain.
Roberts’s nineteen-year-old daughter, improbably named Fifi, and the wife of the chief engineer proved able nurses and, by the time they reached England, Verity was able to walk, though she was still very weak. At least one bullet was lodged in her shoulder and there was a deep scar on her forehead but the trauma which had almost killed her was passing. However Gerda’s death and the horror of what they had seen in Guernica had left all three of them depressed and deeply shocked.
The story which Verity filed the moment she reached England, even before the doctor had dug the bullet out of her shoulder, made the front page of the
New Gazette
and was copied across the world. The Nationalists quickly retaliated with stories discrediting her as a Communist who saw only what she wanted to see and it was these lies that she was now protesting against vociferously. On the bed lay all the daily papers and she was beating the
Daily Mail
with the back of her hand as if she could correct it by force.
‘Listen to this! “The Reds took advantage of the bombing to set fire to the town.” “There is no German or foreign air force in National Spain,” said General Franco’s spokesman. “There is a Spanish air force, which constantly fights against Red planes – Russian and French – piloted by foreigners. We did not burn Guernica. Franco’s Spain does not set fires.” Damn them to hell! We
saw
the Heinkels with our own eyes!’
Her friends, Charlotte and Adrian Hassel, with whom she was recuperating, sat at the end of her bed trying to calm her. Edward, his hands still painful from helping rescue the child trapped in the burning building, lay slumped in an armchair. Morosely, he leafed through the
The Times.
‘It’s only to be expected, V,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t let your story go unchallenged.’
‘But it’s not just my story. Respected journalists like George Steer, who inspected the ruins of Guernica and interviewed witnesses, say what I say: that the town was destroyed by the Luftwaffe.’
‘Of course! And most people will know it’s the truth but there will always be people who don’t want to believe it.’
‘But they’re saying that the militia destroyed the town; that there is no Luftwaffe presence in Spain; that in any case the weather was too bad for any aircraft to fly, when we know it was a hot cloudless day.’
‘They would say that, V,’ Edward said calmly. ‘You have to accept that this is a great propaganda coup for the Republicans. It’s exactly what David was hoping for . . . why he sent you. He can now brand the Fascists as murderers and criminals. There’s no way Franco and his henchmen are going to take that lying down. They’ll mobilize all their allies to try and discredit you. It’s going to be hard for you but you have to look on it as a backhanded compliment.’
‘Huh!’ she said dismissively but she looked a bit happier.
Edward, on the other hand, looked wretched. He wanted to point out something Verity would find unpalatable. Tactfully, knowing that he wanted to talk to Verity alone, Charlotte and Adrian made their excuses.
‘You two will be all right? We shouldn’t really leave you unchaperoned, Verity, but . . .’
‘Go, for goodness sake, Adrian. If I could throw anything at you, I would.’
When the door had closed behind them and they were alone, Edward said, ‘V, I don’t know whether you have thought about what took you to Guernica.’
‘What do you mean – what took me to Guernica? As you say, David gave us exclusive information. I owe him a lot. He gave me the scoop of a lifetime.’
‘Yes but . . . You’re not going to like this, V . . .’
‘Well, spit it out.’
‘Doesn’t it occur to you to wonder if David ever did warn anyone in Guernica? I could find no evidence that he had. We went to Guernica because he sent us, but have you thought
why
he sent us?’
‘To give us a scoop and enable us to prove to the world that Franco’s a murderer.’
‘Precisely! He didn’t give us the information that Guernica might be bombed just to help your career. He wanted a first-hand account of the destruction so he could blaze it forth to the world. There would be no point in having something like that to report if no one knew about it. And he didn’t care if you died getting it.’
‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ Verity said belligerently. ‘I would never have forgiven him if he had gone to some male journalist because he thought women ought to be kept out of danger.’
‘This was more than danger – this was almost certain death. He knew you and Gerda would risk anything to get your story. He could count on you not to be skulking in some cellar.’
‘You are trying to tell me that he sent Gerda to her death deliberately? That’s obscene. And it doesn’t make sense. You’ve just said he needed eyewitnesses to the bombing.’
‘He would expect one of us to survive, I suppose.’
Verity still looked scornful. ‘You hate David. You always have done. You’re letting your dislike of him get in the way of common sense. Why would he want to kill me? Answer me that!’
She stuck out her chin and gave Edward a look of loathing but he was not dismayed. This was his opportunity – however unkind – of making her see for herself the nature of the cause she espoused.
‘See here,’ he said, ‘David knew you had been sent by the
Gazette
to find out if it was true the Communist Party was . . . what’s the expression they use? – “purging” the International Brigade of Trotskyists and Anarchists and so on. I don’t suppose he liked that.’
‘And I didn’t find any evidence – not really. There are stories about Anarchists and Trotskyists being thrown out of the International Brigade but that’s not surprising. We have to be united.’
Verity had gone very pale and Edward wondered if he had been wrong to alert her to his suspicions while she was still in a state of shock.
‘When you’re better,V, I want you to talk to James Lyall. He joined the International Brigade and, without really understanding the difference, joined POUM. David “rescued” him.’
POUM was the United Marxist Workers’ Party. Although Marxist, it was anti-Stalinist and its leader had been a close ally of Trotsky.
‘I know David can be ruthless . . .’ she said slowly, ‘but I can’t believe he would send someone to their death. It’s a beastly, ugly war but it’s not fair to blame it all on David.’
Edward suddenly remembered Gerda telling him in the gallery that David had done just that – sent someone to their death. A writer friend of hers had wanted to get away from the fighting, she said, and David had sent him to a part of the line where he knew he would be killed. He decided not to say anything to Verity. For one thing, he did not want to go on about Gerda. Verity had got it into her head that he had slept with her and André Kavan had convinced her of it. He had implied that Gerda had said as much and, though Verity said she believed him when Edward had denied the charge, it was obvious she wasn’t really convinced of his innocence. It was rather galling, he thought, given the temptation he had resisted, but perhaps he deserved it. Was the thought as bad as the deed?
‘Well, anyway, I must go,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I’m picking James up from his aunt’s house in Clapham. We are going to see Pride at Scotland Yard.’