Authors: C. J. Sansom
It still amazed her that Bernie had been interested in her, she must have looked a fright in that bar, her hair all frizzy and wearing that tatty old jumper. She took off her glasses. She told herself that without them, yes, she could be called quite attractive. She put the glasses on again. As so often, even amid her preoccupation with Bernie, just thinking she was attractive triggered a memory, one of the bad ones. Usually she tried to push them away but she let this one come, even though it left her feeling she was standing on the edge of a precipice. Millie Howard and her gang of eleven-year-olds, forming a circle round her in the quadrangle of the grammar school, chanting. ‘Speccy frizzy-hair, speccy frizzy-hair.’ If she hadn’t had the glasses to mark her out as different, if she hadn’t responded with blushing and tears, would it ever have happened, the tormenting that had gone on for so long? She closed her eyes. Now she saw her older sister, radiant Carol who had inherited their mother’s blonde hair and heart-shaped face, walking through the lounge of the little house in Erdington, off to meet another boy. She swirled past, leaving a rich smell of perfume. ‘Doesn’t she look lovely?’ her mother had asked her
father, while Barbara’s heart burned with jealousy and sadness. A little while before she had broken down and told her mother how the girls taunted her at school. ‘Looks aren’t everything, darling,’ her mother had said. ‘You’re much cleverer than Carol.’
She lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. Mum and Dad, Carol and her good-looking accountant husband were under the air-raids now. The Blitz had moved beyond London; in the week-old, censored edition of the
Daily Mail
she bought at the station, she had read of the first raids on Birmingham. And here she was, sitting in a fine house, still picking at those old wounds while her family were running for the air-raid shelters. It was so petty, she felt ashamed. Sometimes she wondered if there was something wrong with her mind, whether she was a little crazy. She got up and put on her jacket and hat. She would kill some time in the Prado. Then she would see what this man knew. The thought gave her a welcome sense of purpose.
The Prado art gallery was full of blank walls; most of the pictures had been taken down for safe keeping during the Civil War and so far only a few had been returned. It was cold and damp. She had a bad lunch in the little café, then sat smoking till it was time to leave.
Sandy had noticed something was up with her; yesterday he had asked her if she was all right. She replied she was bored; it was true, now they were established in the house there were long hours when she had nothing to do. He had asked if she would like to do some voluntary work, he might be able to fix something up. She had agreed, to put him off the scent. He had nodded, apparently satisfied, and gone off to his study to do some more work.
Sandy had been working on what he called his ‘Min of Mines project’ for six months now. He was often out late, and often worked at home, worked harder than Barbara had ever seen. Sometimes his eyes gleamed with excitement and he smiled as though he had some wonderful secret. Barbara didn’t like that little secret smile. At other times he seemed preoccupied, worried. He said the project was confidential, he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Sometimes he made mysterious trips out to the countryside. There was a geologist involved, a man called Otero who had visited the house a couple of times. Barbara didn’t like him either; he gave her the creeps. She
worried that they might be involved in something illegal; half of Spain seemed to be working the
estraperlo
, the black market. Sandy was scarcely more open about the committee to aid Jewish refugees from France he worked for. Barbara wondered if Sandy felt his voluntary work detracted from the picture he liked to paint of himself as a hard, successful businessman, though it was that better side of him, the side that liked to help those in trouble, that had drawn her to him.
At four she left the Prado and headed into the centre. Shops were opening again after the siesta as she walked through the narrow streets, hot and dusty and smelling of dung. Her sensible shoes rang on the cobbles. Turning a corner, she saw an old man in a tattered shirt trying to manoeuvre a cart filled with cans of olive oil up onto the pavement. He held the cart by its shafts, trying to haul it on to the high kerb. Behind him was a newly painted building, a big banner with the yoke and arrows over the door. As Barbara watched, a pair of blue-shirted young men appeared in the doorway. They bowed, apologizing for blocking her way, and asked the old man if they could help. He relinquished the shafts gratefully and they pulled the cart up onto the pavement for him. ‘My donkey is dead,’ he told them. ‘I have no money for another.’
‘Soon everyone in Spain will have a horse. Just give us time,
señor
.’
‘I had him twenty years. I ate him when he died. Poor Hector, his meat was stringy. Thank you,
compadres
.’
‘
De nada
.’ The Falangists clapped the old man on the back and went back inside. Barbara stepped off the pavement to let him pass. She wondered if things really would get better now. She didn’t know; after four years in Spain she still felt like an alien, there was so much she didn’t understand.
She knew there were idealists in the Falange, people who genuinely wanted to improve Spaniards’ lives, but she knew there were many more who had joined to take advantage of the chance of a corrupt profit. She looked again at the yoke and arrows. Like the blue shirts they reminded her the Falange were fascists, blood-brothers to the Nazis. She saw one of the Falangists looking at her from the window and hurried on.
T
HE BAR WAS
a dark, run-down place. The mandatory portrait of Franco, spotted with grease, hung behind the bar, where a couple of young men lounged. A big grey-haired woman in black was washing glasses at the sink. One of the men carried a crutch; he had lost half a leg, the trouser end crudely sewn up. They all looked at Barbara curiously. Usually only whores came into bars alone, not foreign women wearing expensive dresses and little round hats.
A young man sitting at a table at the back raised his hand. As she walked across he rose and bowed, taking her hand in a strong, dry grip.
‘Señora Forsyth?’
‘Yes.’ She replied in Spanish, trying to keep her voice confident. ‘Are you Luis?’
‘Yes. Please sit. Allow me to get you a coffee.’
She studied him as he went to the bar. He was tall and thin, in his early thirties with black hair and a long sad face. He wore threadbare trousers and an old, stained jacket. His cheeks were stubbly, like those of the other men in the cafe; there was a shortage of razor blades in the city. He walked like a soldier. He came back with two coffees and a plate of tapas. She took a sip and grimaced. He smiled wryly.
‘It is not very good, I am afraid.’
‘It’s all right.’ She looked at the tapas, little brown meatballs with tiny delicate bones sticking out. ‘What are they?’
‘They call it pigeon but I think it is something else. I am not sure what. I would not recommend it.’
She watched as Luis ate, picking the minute bones from his mouth. She had decided not to say anything; leave him to begin. He shifted nervously in his seat, studied her face with large dark eyes.
‘I understand from Mr Markby that you are trying to trace a man who went missing at the Jarama. An Englishman.’ He spoke very quietly.
‘Yes I am, that’s right.’
He nodded. ‘A Communist.’ His eyes still scanned her face. Barbara wondered with a flicker of fear if he was police, if Markby had betrayed her or been betrayed himself. She forced herself to stay calm.
‘My interest is personal, not political. He was – he was my – my boyfriend, before I met my husband. I believed he was dead.’
Luis shifted in his seat again. He coughed. ‘You live in National Spain, I am told you are married to a man with friends in the government. Yet you are looking for a Communist from the war. Forgive me, but this seems strange.’
‘I worked for the Red Cross, we were a neutral organization.’
He gave a quick bitter smile. ‘You were fortunate. No Spaniard has been able to be neutral for a long time.’ He studied her. ‘So, you are not an opponent of the New Spain.’
‘No. General Franco won and that’s that. Britain isn’t at war with Spain.’ Not yet, anyway, she thought.
‘Forgive me.’ Luis spread his hands, suddenly apologetic. ‘Only I have to protect my own position, I have to be careful. Your husband knows nothing of your – search?’
‘No.’
‘Please keep it so,
señora
. If your enquiries became known, they could bring trouble.’
‘I know.’ Her heart was starting to thump with excitement. If he had no information he wouldn’t be this wary, this careful. But what did he know? Where had Markby found him?
Luis eyed her intently again. ‘Say you were to find this man, Señora Forsyth. What would you wish to do?’
‘I’d want to see him repatriated. As he was a prisoner of war he should be returned home. That’s what the Geneva Conventions say.’
He shrugged. ‘That is not how the Generalísimo sees things. He would not like the suggestion that a man who came to our country to make war on Spaniards should simply be sent home. And if it were to be publicly suggested there were still foreign prisoners of war in Spain, such prisoners might disappear. You understand?’
She looked at him, meeting his eyes. Deep-set, unreadable. ‘What do you know?’ she asked.
He leaned forward. A harsh meaty smell came from his mouth. Barbara forced herself not to recoil.
‘My family is from Sevilla,’ he said. ‘When Franco’s rebels took the city my brother and I were conscripted and spent three years fighting the Reds. After the victory, part of the army was disbanded,
but some of us had to stay on and Agustín and I were assigned to guard duties at a camp near Cuenca. You know where that is?’
‘Markby mentioned it. Out towards Aragón, isn’t it?’
Luis nodded. ‘That’s right. Where the famous “hanging houses” are.’
‘The what?’
‘There are ancient houses built right on the edge of the gorge that runs beside the city, so that they seem to hang over it. Some find them beautiful.’ He sighed. ‘Cuenca is high on the
meseta –
you boil in summer and freeze in winter. This is the only time of year it is bearable, frost and snow will come soon. I had two winters up there and, believe me, that was enough.’
‘What is it like? The camp?’
He shifted uneasily again, lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘A labour camp. One of the camps that does not officially exist. This one was for Republican prisoners of war. About eight kilometres from Cuenca, up in the Tierra Muerta. The dead land.’
‘The what?’
‘An area of bare hills below the Valdemeca mountains. That is what it is called.’
‘How many prisoners?’
He shrugged. ‘Five hundred or so.’
‘Foreigners?’
‘A few. Poles, Germans, people whose countries do not want them back.’
She met his gaze firmly. ‘How did Señor Markby find you? When did you tell him this?’
Luis hesitated, scratched his stubbly cheeks. ‘I am sorry,
señora
, I cannot tell you. Only that we unemployed veterans have our meeting places, and some people have contacts the government would not like them to have.’
‘With foreign journalists? Selling stories?’
‘I can say no more.’ He looked genuinely sorry, very young again.
She nodded, took a deep breath, felt a catch in her throat. ‘What were conditions like in the camp?’
He shook his head. ‘Not good. Wooden huts surrounded by barbed wire. You have to understand; these people will never be freed. They
work the stone quarries and repair the roads. There is not much food. A lot die. The government wants them to die.’
She made herself stay calm. She must treat this as though Luis was a foreign official talking about a refugee camp she needed information on. She produced a pack of cigarettes and offered it to him.
‘English cigarettes?’ Luis lit one and savoured the smoke, closing his eyes. When he looked at her again his face expression was hard, serious.
‘Was your
brigadista
strong, Señora Forsyth?’
‘Yes, he was. A strong man.’
‘Only the strong ones survive.’
She felt tears coming, blinked them away. This was the sort of thing he would say if he was deceiving her, trying to appeal to her emotions. Yet his story seemed to have the ring of truth. She fumbled in her handbag and slid Bernie’s photograph across the table. Luis studied it a moment, then shook his head.
‘I do not remember that face, but he would not look like that now. We were not supposed to talk with the prisoners, apart from giving them orders. They thought their ideas might contaminate us.’ He gave her a long stare. ‘But we used to admire them, we soldiers, the way they kept going somehow.’
There was silence for a moment. The smoke from their cigarettes curled up, wreathing round an ancient fan that hung from the ceiling, broken and unmoving.
‘You don’t remember the name Bernie Piper?’
He shook his head, looked again at the photograph. ‘I remember a fair-haired foreigner who was one of the Communists. Most of the English prisoners were returned – your government tried to get them back. But a few who were listed as missing ended up in Cuenca.’ He pushed the picture back across the table. ‘I was given my discharge this spring, but my brother stayed on.’ He looked at her meaningfully. ‘He can get information if I ask. I would need to visit him, letters are censored.’ He paused.
She asked him straight out. ‘How much will it take?’
Luis smiled sadly. ‘You are direct,
señora
. I think for three hundred
pesetas Agustín could say whether this man was a prisoner at the camp or not.’
Three hundred. Barbara swallowed, but allowed nothing to show on her face. ‘How long would it take? I need to know soon. If Spain comes into the war, I’ll have to leave.’
He nodded, suddenly business-like. ‘Give me a week. I will visit Agustín next weekend. But I will need some money now, an advance.’ She raised her eyebrows and Luis reddened suddenly, looking embarrassed. ‘I have no money for the train.’