by Karen Swan
‘But they shall not pass!’
The crowd erupted into a roar, ‘No pasarán!’ being taken up as a chant, making the hairs on the back of Marina’s newly exposed neck stand on end. ‘No pasarán! No pasarán!’
The woman looked around at the ignited mob, then back at her. ‘What is your name?’
‘Marina Marquez.’
‘No pasarán! No pasarán! No pasarán!’
‘Well, Marina Marquez, I’m Paloma Rivas,’ she said, dropping the cigarette to the ground and grinding it out beneath her hobnailed boot. She stuck out her hand welcomingly, as though Marina had passed some kind of test. ‘You just stick with me. I’ve got somewhere you can stay.’
The apartment was in the Salamanca district, at the very top of a grand old peach-tinted building, which gave the impression of blushing in the dusk. Glazed, fully enclosed verandas were stepped all the way up the facade and sycamore trees shaded the streets below, protecting the residents from the harshness of the Spanish sun.
Inside, the genteel nature of the place continued: black and white marble floors, a grand cantilevered staircase, and there was an elaborate cage lift but it appeared to be out of order. The tall lemon tree in the atrium looked dusty and parched.
Marina frowned, feeling a strange twitch in her heart as she followed Paloma up the stairs, catching sight of a broken lace parasol left propped in one corner. No one else appeared to be around, which felt odd coming straight from a crowd of tens of thousands; she knew the city was full to the brim and yet there was an air of abandonment here.
Paloma stopped outside a set of black panelled double doors – they were vast, at least ten feet high – and Marina listened as she gave a series of knocks in sequence, like a code.
A moment later the door opened and a young woman peered out. ‘Oh good, you’re back. We lost sight of you in the crowd.’
‘Hey,’ Paloma said, pulling off her cap and tossing it onto a table in the entrance hall, before striding through into another room. Hesitantly, Marina followed after her, seeing how the girl simply stared. Marina nodded cautiously but the girl said nothing, as though it wasn’t her place to pass comment.
They walked. Marina heard the door close behind her, the girl’s footsteps just behind her own, her gaze raking over Marina’s jagged, jaded appearance. It had been nine days since she had last bathed and she hadn’t slept or even sat on a soft surface in all that time either, unless the mail sack on the train counted. Her food pack had had to suffice for a pillow for the first few days – lumpy though it had been – but once she had finished her supplies, it had been as comfortable to sleep on as a napkin.
But tired as she was, she felt wired right now, her body on high alert as she took in every detail of the deceptively lavish apartment – the deeply architraved doorways two men wide, the cornice details on the high ceilings, the Versailles panelled floors. Wasn’t this everything she had just run from? Escaped?
She turned into the drawing room, or rather, what had been the drawing room, for only a solitary crystal chandelier still remained. Hanging low from the ceiling – albeit its glittering light long since diminished by thick layers of dust – it stood as a token of the belle époque world that had once gently beat within these walls. Several dead plants stood skeletal in their pots; the walls were rimmed with the outlines of Old Masters now removed to new pastures. Marina had grown up in rooms exactly such as this. She didn’t even need to close her eyes to envisage the parties that had been held here – christenings and Christmases and birthdays, women in beautiful dresses that skimmed the parquet floors. She knew these rooms. She knew this one.
Now, though, it wasn’t so much a haven as a hive, some sort of headquarters with long industrial tables set up with papers and, on the back wall, a giant map of Spain. Several smaller desks were set by the windows, ugly filing cabinets pressed against the shutters.
A middle-aged woman was sitting at a typewriter, typing fast, the tat-tat- tat of the keys punctuating the low murmur of intense conversation: two men poring over something in a folder and arguing amongst themselves as they jabbed at a photograph.
‘Hey.’ Paloma’s voice was assertive, and Marina understood she was a leader here – although of what, she didn’t yet know.
Everyone turned. The woman stopped typing, the men arguing, as they caught sight of this new stranger.
‘Guys, this is Marina Marquez. We just met in the rally. She’s arrived from Andalusia this morning and has nowhere else to stay. So I’ve told her she’s with us now.’ It was said as a statement of fact, not a question. She turned back and squeezed Marina’s shoulder like a big sister. ‘These fellows are okay, you can trust them, all right?
One of the men straightened up, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. He was a slight man with an underbite and wire-rimmed glasses, but there was a toughness in his expression that made him somehow assume more space.
‘This is Sindo Coronella. He is our leader. Sindo has valuable contacts both in the government and in the police. If he says we act, then we act, you got it?’ Marina instinctively nodded. ‘No second-guessing. Sindo coordinates all our activities.’
Paloma pointed to the man next to him: bearded and all-round bigger but somehow less menacing. ‘Ivan Gutierrez. Before this, a mechanic, and before that, a soldier in the army. He knows how to handle weapons – how to strip a rifle, clean it, reassemble it again. It is a rare skill for our fighters and one of our biggest disadvantages against the Africanistas. But do not worry, he will show you too.’
She was to handle a rifle? She remembered the gunshot that had killed Juan Esperanza, and how the sound of it had rung in her head, over and over in the weeks afterwards. Stopping her from sleeping, eating . . . But that was then, a lifetime ago. She was a different person now and this was war. Marina Mendoza may have run from this but Marina Marquez would do what had to be done.
Ivan nodded in greeting and she chanced a tiny smile.
‘Luciana here helps with the propaganda side. She writes, prints and helps distribute our posters.’ The woman at the typewriter nodded.
‘And Marta, behind you, is like us: a foot soldier. We go where we’re told and do as we’re asked. There are others of course – they come at different times and go again; but we live here. We are the beating heart.’ Her eyes were dark and intensely fixed upon Marina’s. ‘Help us, work with us and you will have a home here. Those are the terms of the arrangement. Will you join our cause?’
Marina hesitated. ‘I’m not entirely sure what your cause is,’ she said uncertainly.
Paloma threw out her hands as though it was obvious. ‘Why, the overthrow of the Nationalist dogs. The eradication of the Carlist elite. Rights for workers. A fair democracy.’
Marina looked back at the strangers watching her – Sindo, Ivan, Luciana, Marta, and of course Paloma. Were they her family now? They wanted the same things after all. She thought of Juan and Santi, of Arlo – all the people she had loved and lost in different ways. The family she had once had. What choice did she have? Who else was there for her in this world? ‘Then I’m in,’ she shrugged.
Her words seemed to pop the bubble that had formed around her in the apartment, releasing the tension, and she gave a nervous laugh as the others cheerily rushed over to welcome her formally, Ivan clapping her on the back, Marta and Luciana throwing their arms around her as though she was a long-lost daughter. Only Sindo was restrained, greeting her with a handshake: his skin was cool to the touch, his grip firm, reinforcing her initial impression that he was a man not to be trifled with.
‘Welcome to the club,’ he said in a quiet voice, so quiet she almost had to lean closer.
‘Thank you.’
‘Andalusia, Paloma said?’
She nodded. ‘That’s right. Near Seville.’
It was a white lie. Technically, Ronda was closer to Malaga but she needed to walk a tightrope – putting distance between her and her abandoned family, whilst remaining close enough to the area to
be able to discuss it familiarly.
‘My people are from Cordoba.’
‘Oh,’ she nodded, feeling her heart beat faster. ‘I have never been there. I would like to visit – one day.’
‘When the agrarian oligarchy is annihilated.’ It was a question. Or perhaps a test.
‘Of course.’
He looked at her, his expression partially obscured by the reflection on his glasses, and she wondered – did he know? Could he see past the shorn hair and the dirty face and see she was no poverty-born revolutionary? Did he recognize her? Her family’s renown in the region was so great, her father always used to boast the fame of their bulls brought people not to see the matadors but the beasts themselves. Mendoza was a name he would know.
Finally, though, he nodded, looking down the length of her. The food sack, empty now, hung limply across her body. ‘That is all you have?’
She nodded, not daring to offer more and reveal she had run away. Most of the Republican fighters travelled with and fought for their families, not against them.
‘Then go through to the bedroom and rest. You look weary.’
‘I’m ready to work,’ she said stoically, even though she couldn’t think of anything more enticing than a stuffed mattress and twelve hours of oblivion. It had been so long since she had slept well.
His eyes saw everything, it seemed. ‘Rest first. The cause can wait a few hours. You will be more use to us after a wash and some sleep.’
She nodded, looking down. She turned and walked towards the door.
‘The bedroom is the third door—’
On the right, she willed him to say.
‘On the left.’
She smiled her thanks and walked out, but her heart was thudding alarmingly now, her eyes tripping over the friezed walls as some of the details came back: had there been a small oil of a mountain scene here? An oval table against that wall there? Perhaps. Or perhaps not, these places must look all the same, surely? But there was one thing she did remember, something even a little girl could not confuse or forget. She walked to the doorway, third on the left, and looked in – and up.
The adrenaline spiked through her, making her hands tingle and her palms sweat, for the celestial skies painted on the ceiling were exactly as she remembered and there was no denying it any more. She could hardly bear the irony of it, the unfairness that she had fled her home and travelled across the country by foot – only to end up here. In her godmother’s house.
Chapter Seventeen
NM. SE.
Charlotte stared at the initials carved roughly into the bark of the jacaranda tree; they had been crudely etched and would have been almost completely obscured were it not for the especially smooth wood here of the black fissure, like a necrotic wound, running down the trunk on this side. The carving was conveniently hidden from the house, even though the tree was in plain view of it, sitting front and centre between the two spectacular wings.
Checking no one was watching – it would have been hard to explain why she was standing in the middle of a flowerbed – she crouched down and reached her hand in, feeling blindly for something, anything: nothing. Whatever might once have been there, Señora Quincy clearly had it now. It was remarkable it should still have been there after all this time, even more remarkable that she should have remembered it.
With a sigh, she rose, her fingers tracing over the initials once more as she wondered who had carved them and why. NM – one of the Mendozas? She ran through the names she knew of from the file: Mateo, his wife Cristabel, son Felipe, daughters Isabella and Sofia . . . father Carlos, mother Matilda. No Ns though . . .
She picked her way carefully out of the flowerbed and resumed her stroll around the gardens. It was that point in the late afternoon when the sun hung like a peach, heavy and ripe and blushing in the sky; the worst of the heat of the day had passed and the cicadas were still an hour off starting up their scratching racket. She had left her book and a cool drink under the veranda and she headed back there now, restless, anxious to get on.
It had been a slow day and, frankly, pointless. The Marinas were still hiding out, barely venturing from their rooms, Nathan was missing in action somewhere – she hadn’t seen or heard him since his run. As far as she could see, there was no point at all in her being here, whilst perversely, in London, her presence was desperately needed . . .
She had had another shower after her workout, lunch on her own, and now she was just watching the shadows lengthen, killing time and waiting to go. It had been a wasted day. Finally, though, time had obliged her and Mayra had gone to find an estate worker to drive her to the plane; her overnight bag was packed and she could almost taste her escape.
The sound of shoes on the flagstones made her look up expectantly. She reached for her overnight bag and stood in anticipation.
‘—Oh, it’s you,’ she said in surprise as Nathan leaned around the doorway.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he murmured.
There was a pause and she noticed his gaze managed to land everywhere but her. An awkward silence bloomed. What did he want?
‘I understand you’re flying out.’ She nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask why. ‘Mayra’s asked me to drop you on my way. They’ve given me use of the car while I’m here.’
‘Oh.’ Wasn’t there a golf cart she could use? She could drive it there herself. ‘. . . Right.’
She picked up the bag and followed him down the cool dark hallway, their footsteps out of time with one another. They walked through the main hall, below the pardoned bulls, down the steps into the courtyard and over to a shiny red jeep.
The keys were hanging in the ignition. She got in beside him and busied herself with untwisting her seat belt as he turned the engine on and pulled away, the wheels back-spinning momentarily so that a cloud of dust obscured their departure from the house. The radio station had been left tuned to a channel playing obscure Euro pop hits but he, predictably, managed only a few minutes before switching over to a talk channel.
‘So where are you off to?’ she asked stiffly, feeling the need to pierce the silence between them.
‘Ronda. I’m going to check the local records for someone.’
‘Who?’
‘A man called Jack Quincy.’
‘. . . Marina’s husband?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Think so?’
‘There could be other candidates but I’m starting with the assumption that Quincy, which clearly isn’t a Spanish name, could be American, possibly British. Therefore I’ve checked the records for the International Brigades and found three Quincys – all American – who signed up to serve.’ His voice was flat and toneless. ‘One, Edward, died on the ship over. Another, Theodore, fought in Barcelona and returned to the States in early ’39. But I’ve ruled him out – he was gay and lived with his partner in San Francisco until his death in 1972.’
‘If he’s dead, how do you know he was gay?’
‘I spoke to his business partner’s son,’ he said shortly. ‘The last one, Jack, came by ship to Malaga and was killed in Madrid in the spring of 1937. He looks the most likely.’
‘What do you know about him?’
He shrugged. ‘Former Baptist minister from Oregon. Landed in Malaga as part of the first wave of international volunteers. Seems to have arrived in Ronda sometime in November ’36 and helped coordinate a local resistance group before moving on, probably up to the capital.’
‘When did he leave here?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out but it must have been early on. This region was one of the first to fall to the fascists. There had been various attempted uprisings against the Establishment in the years before the war and the subsequent reprisals were severe and, let’s just say, disproportionate. It was no place for the reds to hang around.’
Charlotte looked across at him, wondering if there was more, but he was staring straight ahead, his jaw set; he certainly didn’t look to be offering anything furth
er. She pulled her gaze off him again, looking out of the window as they sped along, seeing how the grass was beginning to lose its manicured edges as they pulled to the further reaches of the estate, the green becoming less vibrant as grass was replaced with hay.
Just a few more minutes and they’d be back at the plane; she’d be heading back to London, away from here and him . . .
She tried to ignore the wafts of his aftershave – Aramis, still – that kept drifting over in the wind; she determined not to notice how he still drove with his hands splayed against the wheel, the upper tips of his fingers free to tap along to the music—
He turned back to her, the excitement clear and bright on his face. Paul McCartney was singing within touching distance of their table and she knew it was taking all his self-control not to reach out and check he was real, that this was actually happening. He hadn’t believed her at first when she’d said he’d be performing at her mother’s birthday celebrations.
‘Are you a fan?’ Cecilia Fairfax asked him, sitting on his right.
‘Ever since I first heard “Strawberry Fields”,’ he replied. ‘My mother saw the Beatles at the Cavern in ’61.’
‘Oh? Are your people from Liverpool?’
He frowned. ‘No. Sheffield.’
‘Ah, I’ve never been. Always meant to get up there but you know how it is.’
‘Any objection if I smoke?’ he asked rhetorically, pulling a packet from his shirt pocket anyway.
The question brought her back from the reverie with a start. ‘Since when do you smoke?’
‘Since forever.’
Define ‘forever’, she wanted to say. The moment after she’d broken them?
She leaned against the cubicle, light-headed. She had drunk too much again.
Heels clipped in on the Portland stone floor, sequinned evening bags splaying on the marble counter. The sound of rushing water.
‘. . . He’s an interesting fellow, though. There’s something about him, even if he does have that accent.’