The letters from one side of the paper showed through to the other, making the task of reading a challenge. The old man did his best, reciting each sentence in Spanish before translating into rather old-fashioned English.
Dear Mother,
I know you will understand why I have not written for so long. It was because I was anxious not to incriminate you. I know I am regarded as a traitor for staying out of Spain and I hope you will forgive me for this. It seemed the safest way for all concerned.
I want to tell you what happened after I left for England on the
Habana
four years ago . . .
With every minute that passed, the expanse of water between Mercedes and her homeland widened.The wind got up not long after they set sail and, as they sailed out into the Bay of Biscay, the waves began to roll.The roughness took everyone by surprise. Many of these children had never been on a boat before, and the violence of the rocking motion terrified them. Many had begun to cry as they sensed their disorientation and were gripped by the first gagging moments of nausea.
Even the colour of the sea seemed alien. No longer blue, it was now the colour of churned-up mud. Some of the children were immediately sick and as the journey continued even the adults were retching. Soon the decks were slippery with vomit.
In spite of Mercedes’ protest, Enrique was separated from her and put on an upper deck. For many hours she lost sight of him and felt that she had already failed his mother.
‘You aren’t here only to look after those children,’ scolded one of the older assistants.
She was right. Mercedes’ role on this journey and beyond it was to take care of a bigger group and her concern for just two of the children was frowned upon by several of the teachers and priests.
That night, the children slept where they could as the boat rolled up and down. Some of them nestled into the bottom of a lifeboat, others curled up on huge coils of rope. Soon Mercedes was incapable of offering them comfort. Queasiness overcame her. When the rough seas became calm again the next day, the relief was immense. The coast of England had been in sight for some time but only when the sea ceased to hurl them around did they notice the thin dark line on the horizon that was Hampshire’s coastline. By six thirty on that second day they were docking at Southampton.
The dead flat calm of the harbour was complete sanctuary, and as quickly as it had arrived, the awful seasickness disappeared. On the deck of the ship, small hands held on to the railings and peered over to look at this new country. All they could see were the dark harbour walls that loomed over them.
There was the noisy business of docking the ship to be completed and they heard the alarming clank of the anchor chain, and huge ropes as thick as arms were thrown down on to the quayside. Grizzled men looked up at them with a mixture of pity and curiosity. They meant no harm. There were shouts in a language they did not recognise, gruff aggressive voices and the bellowing holler of the docker who had to make himself heard above the general cacophony.
The sun came out through the clouds but the novelty and excitement of this adventure had worn off.These children wanted to be at home with their mothers. Many had become separated from siblings during the journey and it took time to sort them into groups but the hexagonal badges helped, and each one of them was soon allocated to a helper. Mercedes had hoped for the opportunity to get to know her charges on the journey, but the storm had stolen the moment.
Before disembarkation the children underwent another medical examination and coloured ribbons were tied to their wrists to indicate if treatment was required: a red ribbon meant a journey to the corporation baths for delousing, a blue ribbon meant that infectious disease had been diagnosed and a visit to the isolation hospital was required, and a white ribbon showed a clean bill of health.
All the poor mites looked bedraggled. Hair, so beautifully brushed, ribboned and carefully plaited almost two days earlier, was now matted into hard clumps. Smart knitted jumpers were stained by vomit.The
señoritas
did their best to make them presentable.
Finally, the children had to be reunited with their possessions and given back the very little they had brought with them. Small girls now clutched a favourite doll and boys stood bravely, like little men. By the time they were all assembled and ready to leave the ship they had been docked for some time.
The curiosity was mutual. Everyone stared, wide-eyed. The Spaniards looked at the English and the English gazed at the foreign children edging their way along the deck. Britain had heard so much about the barbaric behaviour of the
rojos
in Spain, how they had burned down churches and tortured innocent nuns, that they expected to see little savages. When these wide-eyed children, some of them still managing to look smartly dressed, came into view, they were amazed.
Among the first English people the Spanish children saw were members of a Salvation Army band. Mercedes did not quite know what to make of them, in their dark uniforms, blasting their bright tunes from gleaming trumpets and trombones.They seemed rather military to her, but she soon learned that they meant well.
Southampton looked like a town in fiesta. Its streets were bedecked with bunting and the Spanish children smiled, imagining this was put up to welcome them. They would discover only later that it was left over from the celebration of the recent coronation.
Those who had been given a clean bill of health were driven in double-decker buses from Southampton for a few miles to North Stoneham, the place that was to be their temporary home. It was a huge encampment spread over three fields, with five hundred white, bell-shaped tents in neat rows. Each tent would accommodate eight to ten children, with boys and girls separated. ‘
Indios!
’ exclaimed some of the children with excitement when they saw them.
‘They think it’s all a big game of cowboys and Indians,’ said Enrique scornfully to his sister, who stood next to him clutching her doll.
For Mercedes it immediately invited comparison with the makeshift tents that people had improvised on the road from Málaga to Almería. Here there was order, safety and, most touching of all, kindness. In these green meadows they had found sanctuary.
The organisation was impressive. As well as the divisions between girls and boys, there were separate areas for the three groups of children, divided according to the politics of their parents. The organisers wanted to minimise the aggression between rival groups.
The camp was its own self-contained world with its own rules and routines. Queues for food were orderly, though it did take four hours to serve the first meal. Much of what they were given tasted strange to the evacuees but they were grateful for it and acquainted themselves with new flavours and tastes like Horlicks and tea. Mercedes found some of the children in her care were hoarding food; for so long they had worried about where the next meal was coming from.
They picnicked in the sunshine but for many days they were anxious whenever they heard the sound of aeroplanes passing over towards the nearby airfield in Eastleigh.They associated the sound so strongly with the threat of air raids. After a while they began to lie back on the soft English grass and watch the pale puffy clouds, safe in the knowledge that bombers were not going to blot out the sun.
The children were kept busy with lessons, chores and gymnastics, but the discipline was kind, and every effort was made to ensure that this place did not feel like a prison. Each day there was a prize for the tidiest tent and Mercedes made sure that her little charges often won the competition. All of them suffered in some way from aching homesickness, but even the youngest managed to keep their tears until night-time.
The refugees were much greater in number than originally expected, but the pressure was soon lifted when, in the first week, four hundred were taken to a Salvation Army hostel and within a month one thousand more had gone to Catholic homes. There were some food shortages, but not of the same scale that many of them had experienced in Bilbao. One mealtime, Mercedes scrutinised the old and battered knife and fork she was using and remembered that every single item in the camp was from a voluntary donation. Though they were reasonably well protected from the attitudes of the outside world, she knew that the British government had refused to fund their stay in England. Furious efforts were going on to raise money to feed and clothe them and they relied entirely on the kindness of strangers.
Though they were protected from articles in the newspapers that were hostile to their arrival, one piece of news that was not kept from the Spanish refugees was the fall of Bilbao to the Nationalists. Only a month after they had sailed away from it, the city had fallen. It was a very black day at Stoneham. Many of the children ran amok, crying and screaming, panic-stricken at the thought that their parents could now be dead. Enrique, along with some other boys, ran out of the camp, determined to find a boat so that they could return to Spain and fight.They were soon found and brought back to camp. Mercedes spent the night comforting Enrique, assuring him that his mother would be all right. As she sat with him, she thought of Javier too and once again hoped that he had got out of the city long ago.
News of Bilbao’s capture created a dilemma for everyone.
‘Surely we can’t go back now?’ said Mercedes to one of the other assistants.
‘No, I don’t think we can. I think the children would be in even more danger than they were before,’ replied Carmen.
‘So what’s going to happen to us all?’ asked Mercedes.
‘Your guess is as good as mine, but I don’t think we can camp out forever in this climate!’
At some point soon everyone at the camp in North Stoneham would have to be moved somewhere more permanent. The Basque Children’s Committee was already working hard to find a solution. Up and down the country, they were establishing ‘colonies’ in which to house the children, and the destination for each
niño
could be arbitrary. For some it could be another tent, an empty hotel, or a castle. For Mercedes it was a country mansion.
At the end of July she accompanied a group of twenty-five children, including Enrique and Paloma, to Sussex. They took the train to Haywards Heath and at the railway station they were welcomed by the town band and children who had brought gifts of sweets. It was a warm and happy day. From there a bus dropped them in a village fifteen kilometres away and after that it was a short walk from the village until they reached the gateposts of Winton Hall.
The eagle-topped pillars were imposing if dilapidated. Some of the bricks were dislodged and one of the moss-covered eagles had lost a wing. Nevertheless, they created an intimidating impression of what was to come.The children joined hands and marched in pairs along the kilometre of rutted driveway. Mercedes walked with Carmen, the teacher in charge of the group. In the past two months the two women had become close friends.
It was hot.The temperature made them feel as though they were back at home.The as yet unharvested fields around them were pale and parched and the sky was a clear, bright blue. Butterflies basked on the buddleia bushes that grew in profusion along the way, and the younger children squealed with delight at the Red Admirals that fluttered around their heads.They picked buttercups and daisies from the verge and made up a song. Their walk seemed to pass in no time and they even forgot the weight of their bags.
Mercedes was the first to reach a bend in the driveway where the house came into view. She had seen pictures of English stately homes in books, so she had some idea of what they looked like, but she would never have imagined that one would become her home. Winton Hall was built of a sandy coloured stone and had more chimneys and turrets than some of the younger children could count.
‘It’s a fairy castle!’ exclaimed Paloma.
‘Are we coming to live with the new King?’ asked her friend.
The owners had been watching their progress along the driveway from an upstairs room and were now at the top of the steps to the entrance. Two spaniels sat at their feet.
Sir John and Lady Greenham had all the trappings of the English landed gentry without any of the wealth. Winton Hall had been built by Sir John’s grandfather, who had been a wealthy industrialist, but over the years its fabric had begun to disintegrate around the subsequent generations who lived there.
‘Welcome to Winton Hall,’said the master of the house, coming down to meet the arrivals.