Winter in Madrid (26 page)

Barbara returned. ‘We can go through,’ she said.

Sandy got up and stood between Harry and de Salas, a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘We should renew this talk another time. But let’s change the subject now, eh, out of deference to the ladies.’ He gave them a fatherly smile and Harry wondered again, how did he come to seem so middle-aged, so much older than he was? He had felt sorry for Sandy before but now he struck him as faintly repulsive.

A
COLD BUFFET
had been laid in the dining room. They filled their plates and took them to the oak table. Sandy opened a fresh bottle of wine. Jenny had brought the gin bottle with her.

‘Sandy,’ de Salas said, ‘you should have invited a
señorita
for
Señor
Brett.’

‘Yes, Sandy, we’re one short,’ Jenny agreed. ‘Bad form.’

‘There wasn’t time.’

‘It’s all right,’ Harry said. ‘I should meet plenty of
señoritas
on Thursday. I’m going to my first Spanish party.’

‘And where is that?’ de Salas asked.

‘General Maestre’s house. It’s his daughter’s eighteenth.’

De Salas looked at Harry with new interest. ‘Maestre, eh?’

‘Yes. I translated at a meeting between him and one of our diplomats.’

Sandy’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘No, Sebastian, no business tonight.’

De Salas nodded and turned to Barbara. ‘How are your plans going,
señora
, to work with the orphans? The
marquesa
was helpful?’

‘Yes, thanks. She’s hoping to fix something up.’

‘I am glad. Will you enjoy going back to nursing?’

‘I’d like to do something to help. I feel I ought to, really.’

‘Jenny is a nurse too, like Barbara,’ de Salas told Harry. ‘I met her when she came out to help during the war.’

‘What?’ Jenny lifted her head, her face flushed. Harry realized she was drunk. ‘I didn’t catch that. Why am I like Barbara?’

‘I was saying you were a nurse.’

‘Oh yes! Yes!’ She laughed. ‘I’m not a proper nurse, though. I never trained. But when I came out, they put me straight into helping at operations. After the Jarama battle. Just as well I’m not squeamish.’

Barbara bowed her head to her plate. Sandy gave her a solicitous glance.

‘Harry,’ he said, ‘do have some of this marvellous red. I had to pay the earth for it. Scandalous.’

De Salas smiled at Harry. ‘I expect the embassy has its own supplies.’

‘We get rations. They’re not too bad.’

De Salas nodded. ‘Is it true there is much hardship in England? Food is rationed?’

‘Yes. But everyone gets enough.’

‘Do they? It is not what we read here.’ He leaned forward, genuinely interested. ‘But tell me, please, I am interested, why do you
go on with the war? You were beaten in France, why not surrender now?’

He wouldn’t let it go. Harry glanced at Barbara. ‘It’s what all the Spaniards think,’ she told him.

‘Hitler has offered you peace. And I have seen so many killed in Spain, I wish the killing could stop in Europe.’

Sandy leaned forward. ‘He’s got a point, you know. England should surrender now, while good terms are on the table. I’m not being unpatriotic, Harry, I only want what’s in my country’s best interests. I’ve been away nearly four years, and sometimes you see things more clearly from a distance. And England can’t win.’

‘People are determined.’

‘To defend democracy, eh?’ de Salas smiled sadly.

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps Hitler would let us keep democracy?’ Sandy suggested. ‘In return for leaving the war.’

‘He hasn’t a very good record in that department.’ Harry felt sudden anger. He had actually fought the Germans, while Sandy was sitting here making money. Sandy may have taken people round former battlefields, but Harry had been on a real one.

‘There isn’t much democracy left in England, from what I hear,’ Jenny interjected loudly. ‘Oswald Mosley was locked up just for leading the wrong party.’

Barbara shot her a look of venom. De Salas coughed.

‘I think perhaps we are getting a little heated,’ he said awkwardly.

T
HE PARTY
didn’t last long. Soon de Salas said they must go and led a stumbling Jenny away.

‘Don’t invite her again, Sandy, please,’ Barbara said when they had left.

Sandy raised his eyebrows at Harry as he lit a cigar. ‘Jenny spent the whole of the Civil War nursing out here. She was pretty wild before, ran away from Roedean apparently. Can’t seem to cope with peace, just gets drunk all the time. Sebastian’s thinking of giving her the heave-ho.’

‘She’s foul,’ Barbara said. She turned to Harry. ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t very sociable tonight.’

‘Don Sebastian seems civilized enough,’ Harry said. ‘In his way.’

‘Yes.’ Sandy nodded. ‘Spanish fascism’s not like Nazism, Harry, you have to remember that. They’re much more like the Italians. I’m doing some charitable work with refugee Jews, for example. Have to keep it a bit quiet because they’re terrified of annoying the Germans, but the authorities wink at it.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t mind what I was saying earlier about Britain surrendering. It was just – conversation. It’s the big topic here, as you might imagine. They’d be happy if the war ended, they’ve had enough bloodshed, as Sebastian was saying.’

Barbara lit a cigarette. ‘I agree they haven’t got the Nazi ideas about racial purity here. But they’re still a brutal lot.’

Sandy raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you agreed Franco had brought some order at last.’

Barbara shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’ll get Pilar to clean up, Sandy, then I’m going up. I’ll leave you to your drinks. Sorry, Harry, I’m not feeling too bright. Got a bad headache.’ She gave him a wan smile. ‘I’ll ring you and we can meet up.’

‘Yes, do. A call to the embassy will usually get me. Later this week, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps.’ He sensed the reluctance in her voice again. Why, he wondered.

When they were alone, Sandy poured them a whisky and lit a cigar. He seemed to have a tremendous capacity. Harry had been drinking slowly to keep his head clear.

‘Is Barbara all right?’ he asked.

Sandy waved a hand dismissively. ‘Oh yes. Just tired and worried about home. The bombing and everything. Listen, when she rings you, take her out for a nice lunch somewhere. She’s on her own here too much.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s a funny old place, Spain, but there are lots of business opportunities.’ He laughed. ‘Might be as well not to mention you know me, when you go to the ball for Maestre’s girly. The government’s a nest of rivalries, and the faction I’m working with and Maestre’s don’t get on.’

‘Oh?’ Harry paused, then asked innocently. ‘Maestre’s a Monarchist, isn’t he?’

Sandy’s eyes through the cigar smoke were hooded, calculating. ‘Yes, that’s right. Hidebound lot.’ He looked at Harry seriously. ‘By the way, you remember what I was saying in the cafe, about maybe getting out of Spain?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t tell Barbara, would you? If I do decide to go it won’t be for a while. I’ll tell her when the time’s right.’

‘Of course. Understood.’

‘Still got business to finish here. Money to make.’ He smiled. ‘I expect all your funds are invested in safe things?’

Harry hesitated. That calculating look was back in Sandy’s face. ‘Yes. My parents left some money, and my uncle put it in safe securities. I’ve left everything where he put it. Too safe, I sometimes think.’ He laughed uncertainly. In fact, he didn’t think money could ever be kept too safe, but he wanted to see where Sandy was leading.

‘Money can always make more money, if you know where to put it.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

To Harry’s disappointment, Sandy stood up. ‘Anyway, I want to show you something. Come upstairs.’

He led Harry upstairs to a small comfortable study, full of objets d’art. ‘My sanctum. I come up here to work in peace.’ Harry’s eyes flickered over the desk; there were cardboard folders and papers but he couldn’t see what they were.

‘Look at this.’ Sandy switched on the little light above the figure of the man sprawled over the distorted horse, limping across the desert.

‘I think it’s a Dalí,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’

‘Disturbing,’ Harry said. Most of the objects displayed in the room had an unsettling quality: a woman’s hand in a lace sleeve exquisitely sculpted in silver; a Japanese vase showing a bloody battle scene, the colours extraordinary.

‘You can pick up the most astonishing things in the Rastro,’ Sandy said. ‘Stuff the Reds looted from rich people’s houses during the war. Here, this is what I want to show you.’ He opened a drawer in the desk and lifted out a tray. It was full of fossils, stones with the bones of strange creatures embedded inside.

‘My collection. The best bits, anyway.’ He pointed to a dark stone. ‘Remember that?’

‘God, yes. The ammonite.’

‘I used to enjoy our fossil hunts – like I said the other day, they’re the only good thing I remember about Rookwood.’ He smiled awkwardly. Harry felt oddly touched, suddenly guilty for what he was doing.

‘Now,’ Sandy said. ‘Have a look at this.’ He knelt and lifted the lid from a long, flat wooden box that lay by his desk. Inside was a large, flat white stone.

‘Found that down towards Extremadura a few months ago.’

Embedded in the stone were the bones of a long foot, the three toes ending in curved claws. One claw was much bigger than the other two, the length of a man’s hand.

‘Beautiful, isn’t he? Early Cretaceous, over a hundred million years old.’ His face was alight with genuine wonder; for a moment he looked like a schoolboy again.

‘What species is it?’

‘That’s the interesting bit. I think it may be something new. I’m going to take it to the Natural History Museum when I go home. If it’s still there.’

Sandy looked down at the fossil. ‘By the way, another thing when you see Barbara. I’ve told her I wasn’t friendly with Piper, but I didn’t tell her we didn’t get on at all. Thought it better not to.’

‘I understand.’

‘Thanks.’ Sandy gave an awkward smile. ‘I hated that school so much.’

‘I know. You’ve done OK now, though.’ Harry laughed. ‘Do you remember when you left, you told me you thought you were fated always to be the bad lad, the loser?’

Sandy laughed. ‘Yes. I was letting the bastards get me down. I got a better education on the racetracks. I learned there you can make your own future, be what you want to be.’

‘I sometimes wonder myself.’

‘What?’

‘Oh – whether Rookwood did give you a distorted picture of the world. A complacent one.’

Sandy nodded. ‘Like I said in the cafe, the future belongs to people who can reach out and seize life. We should never let the past hold us back. And there’s no such thing as fate.’

He looked at Harry intently. Harry looked down at the dinosaur’s limb. He noticed the claws were curled, as though the creature had been about to strike when it died.

H
ARRY WAS DEBRIEFED
by Hillgarth the next morning. He was delighted with his progress. He told him to see Sandy again as soon as possible, try to lead him on to talk about the gold, and push Barbara for information too when he met her.

It was almost lunchtime when he returned to his office. He had been translating a new speech from the governor of Barcelona but found that it had been taken from his desk. He went to see Weaver.

‘Had to give it to Carne,’ Weaver said languidly. ‘Didn’t know how long you’d be with the sneaky beakies, and it needed to be done.’ He sighed. ‘You might as well take the rest of the day off now.’

Harry left the building and walked home. The two other translators, he knew, were annoyed that he kept leaving his work, a frostiness was growing up between them. Blow them, Harry thought. They were affected foreign-office types and he couldn’t be bothered with them. He was becoming more and more conscious, though, of loneliness; apart from Tolhurst, he had no friends at the embassy.

At home he ate a cold lunch and then, not wanting to stay in the flat on his own all afternoon, changed into casual clothes and went out for a walk. The weather was still cold and dank, a faint mist obscuring the end of the street. He stood in the square, wondering where to go, then turned down the street that led into La Latina, with Carabanchel beyond, what Tolhurst had called a bad area that first afternoon. He remembered Bernie’s friends, the Meras. He wondered if they might still be down there somewhere.

As he walked through La Latina he thought about Barbara. He didn’t relish the task before him, asking prying questions about Sandy’s work without seeming too obvious. She had changed out of all recognition. But she wasn’t happy, he could see. He had told Hillgarth that, then felt guilty.

He walked down to the Puerta de Toledo. Beyond lay Carabanchel. He hesitated for a few moments, then crossed the bridge and walked into the warren of tall tenements.

On this damp cold afternoon, the
barrio
was almost deserted, only a few people walking by. He thought, how Bernie and I must have stood out here in ’31, pale and English in our white shirts. Some of the houses looked about to fall down and were supported by wooden beams; the streets were full of potholes and broken slabs and there was the occasional bombsite, half-demolished walls standing among piles of rubble like broken teeth. Harry flinched as a large rat ran from a bombed house and streaked along the gutter ahead of him.

Then he heard steady footsteps behind. He swore quietly. His spy again, he must have been waiting near the flat. In his preoccupation he had forgotten to watch out for him; bad tradecraft. He backed into the doorway of the nearest tenement. The door was closed and he reached for the handle, slipping into a dark hallway. Water dripped somewhere and there was a strong smell of urine. He pushed the door to, leaving just a crack to peer round.

He saw the pale young man plod past, hunched into his coat. Harry waited a few minutes, then emerged and turned down a side street. The area seemed familiar. A little group of middle-aged men eyed him coldly as he passed the corner where they stood talking. He remembered with a stab of sadness how welcoming the people had been nine years before.