What Tomorrow Brings

by Mary Fitzgerald

  ‘What did he say?’ I looked at the old man and then at Paul.

  ‘He said I was very lucky to be with such a beautiful woman.’

  I could feel my face reddening. ‘I think his eyesight’s failing,’ I muttered.

  Paul laughed. ‘False modesty,’ he said. ‘Don’t you realise? You are lovely.’

  I laughed. Despite Charlie saying that I wasn’t bad-looking, and Amyas being prepared to take me to bed, I was still unable to accept the compliment as genuine. But it was nice to hear it. The old man was speaking again and I looked at Paul for an explanation.

  ‘He says your hair is the colour of life. That you are a spirit of the mountain.’ Paul shook his head. ‘I would not agree. You are better than that. A companion, a colleague.’ He looked down at his arm. ‘A nurse. That is what you are to me.’

  I smiled at the old man and shook his hand again before we walked on another few hundred yards into the heart of the village. The café was open and we ate a dish of butter beans, potatoes and fried egg loaded with garlic and chilli, and washed it down with a carafe of rough red wine. Every mouthful was delicious and I was embarrassed by how greedily I was eating. Paul though, only picked at his food.

  ‘How far d’you think it is to Llavorsí?’ I asked, wearily sitting back from the table and looking at the little stone street outside the open door of the café.

  ‘Not very far,’ Paul murmured. ‘Three, four kilometres, perhaps. And on a road. It will be easy.’

  Three or four kilometres, I thought, gazing up at the mountains. The cloud had lifted and the sun had come out, and was beaming down on the dusty, grey stone village. It was warm, and I turned my face to the glow. Just three or kilometres, then I will have to find Charlie. Somehow I didn’t think that it would be difficult. In these small villages everyone was aware of a stranger. But I wondered again why he couldn’t come out on his own. He was fitter than I was, and if I could make it across the mountains then so could he. I knew he was in danger of being arrested if he was found, having previously, like Paul, been thrown out of the country. And I also knew that the Nationalists had overrun this part of Spain, but that Madrid was still in Republican hands. He could have got there and flown out. So why hadn’t he? It was only then that I realised he must have been injured. There was no other explanation. I started feeling anxious again. I had to find him.

  ‘It’s time to go,’ I started to say, turning my head away from the mountains to look at Paul. To my alarm, his face was contorted with pain and beads of sweat lined his temples. He was nursing his arm, holding it close to his body and rocking slightly in his chair.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I gasped, shocked by his appearance.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he groaned. ‘I feel . . . strange.’

  ‘Where? Your arm?’

  ‘Yes. And my head.’ I looked at his eyes: they were not focusing again, and after a few moments, he closed them.

  ‘Oh no,’ I wailed. Jumping up, I looked for help from the café owner, who was sitting at another table with a glass and uncorked bottle in front of him. ‘A doctor!’ I shouted in French. ‘Is there a doctor anywhere? My friend is very sick.’ He gaped at me and shook his head and I shouted again, ‘A doctor!’ Now, he stood up and edged warily over to Paul and stared at him. He muttered something and then shrugged.

  ‘Paul!’ I shook his shoulder. ‘Wake up!’ He opened his eyes.

  ‘Yes. What d’you want?’ His voice was slurred and his eyelids drooped.

  ‘Please, Paul,’ I cried, ‘try to keep awake. I’ll get help.’ I ran out of the café and looked up and down the dusty street. There were very few people about, only an old woman who was carrying a rolled-up bundle of sticks and a man sitting on cart behind a bony horse.

  ‘Is there a doctor?’ I shouted. ‘Can you help me?’ They both looked at me in amazement, and the old woman held her sticks closer to her bent body, as though I was about to take them from her.

  A priest was walking down from the little church, so I ran to him. ‘Father. Is there a doctor? My friend is ill.’

  The old priest answered me in French. ‘No, mademoiselle. We have no doctor. At Sort, there is a doctor. Where is your friend?’ I dragged him back to the café, where he looked at Paul who was slumped on the chair. ‘What is the matter with him?’

  ‘He fell, yesterday. He hit his head and his arm. We have walked since then, and I thought he was better.’

  The priest bent down and spoke to Paul. ‘You are sick, my son?’

  Paul opened his eyes and tried to focus on the priest. ‘Yes, Father, I have a headache. I think . . .’ His voice trailed off and his eyes closed again.

  I grabbed his shoulders and propped him up, for now he was in danger of falling off the chair, and I looked wildly at the priest. ‘What should I do?’ I cried.

  The old man took charge. He said something rapidly to the café owner, and then shouted outside to the man with the cart. Reluctantly, both men came to the priest’s aid, and between them they carried Paul outside and put him on the back of the cart.

  ‘I will take him to the church. I have a mattress in the vestry. He can lie there.’ The priest jerked his head to the carter, who clicked up the horse, and the cart slowly moved across the road. ‘Come, mademoiselle.’ The priest urged me to follow him, and I offered some francs to the café owner for our meal, then picked up both rucksacks and crossed the road.

  Paul lay on a feather mattress in a stone room behind the church. The smell of incense bathed the air, and dust particles danced in the narrow shafts of sunlight which shone through small, arched windows. He wavered in and out of consciousness, and I fell to my knees beside him to wipe the sweat from his head with the damp cloth that the priest had given me.

  ‘The carter will go for the doctor, if you give him some money, mademoiselle. I tried to get him to take your friend on the back of the cart but that he won’t do. The responsibility is too much. So, instead, he will go and tell the doctor of your friend’s injury. The doctor, Professor Gonzalez, has a car, and will come here.’ He paused, and frowned as Paul started muttering and shouting sudden swear words. ‘Your friend has a troubled conscience.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘He is a reporter who has seen many dreadful things. They prey on his mind.’

  ‘Ah,’ the old priest replied. ‘I understand. And you, mademoiselle? Have you seen terrible things also?’

  ‘Not in Spain,’ I answered, making an effort at conversation, although not really wanting to talk. Getting help for Paul was all I could really think of. ‘I am new to this work. But,’ I added, ‘I was in Germany, horrible things have happened there.’

  The priest shrugged. ‘That is only to the Jews,’ he said. ‘It is not the same.’

  I looked up, shocked at his callousness, and was ready to get into an argument. But Paul lay semi-conscious on the floor between us so I bit my tongue, and lowered my eyes. I bent over him again, and wiped his forehead. His eyes opened. ‘Seffy,’ he said. ‘Go on to Llavorsí. It’s only a few kilometres. You can do nothing for me here.’

  ‘The priest has sent for a doctor,’ I whispered. ‘He will make you better.’

  ‘Yes. Now go.’

  I was torn. I knew I must get to Charlie, but I didn’t want to leave Paul. In a stupid way I felt responsible for him. ‘Go,’ he whispered again, and, as I stood up, he added, ‘Take my pistol.’

  Why? I wanted to ask, but his eyelids had dropped shut again, and I stood, uncertain what I should do.

  ‘The carter will go when you pay him,’ the priest reminded me, and I made up my mind.

  ‘I must go too,’ I said. ‘I leave my friend in your charge. His name is Paul Durban, and he comes from Perpignan, and,’ I took out my wallet, ‘this is payment for the doctor, and some for the church. I am grateful for your care.’

  He took the money, and nodded. ‘You are generous, my child.’ And while he was putting the notes in a wooden box on a little side table, I opened Paul’
s rucksack and took out the pistol, transferring it to my bag.

  With a last look at Paul, and a thank-you nod to the priest, I left the church and went outside into the hot afternoon.

  The carter wanted to haggle over the amount he needed, jabbing his finger at me and speaking in heavily accented French. At another time, the old me would have weakly given in, but I was worked up with a mixture of anxiety and anger. ‘I will give you this much,’ I said, noticing a new edge of steel which had crept into my voice. ‘And no more. It is enough.’ I wasn’t surprised when he accepted the money. He knew I wouldn’t be argued with. ‘I will come with you as far as Llavorsí,’ I added. ‘And,’ I said firmly, ‘the priest will know if you don’t go for the doctor. And, what is more, so will God.’

  The road to Llavorsí ran beside the river. It was a good surface, hard-packed dirt, smoothed by generations of travellers. A car could have made the distance in less than ten minutes, but the bony old horse only walked at about three miles an hour, and I sat beside the carter, baked by the blazing afternoon sun, while my mind whirled with events past, and the possibility of those to come.

  The carter didn’t speak, and I was glad of it, I needed to think. What would be my best course of action once we reached Llavorsí? Was it a bigger village than Ribera, with policemen, and other officials? And, most worrying of all, where was Charlie?

  I looked down the road. It ran between steeply wooded hillsides and curved this way and that around bends, all the time at a gentle downhill gradient. Beside the road, the river gushed and tumbled its way through rocks and gulleys, heading for the softer lands beyond the Pyrenees. Indeed, almost the only noise I could hear was the river, for everywhere around us was silent. Except for the muffled clop of the horse and the occasional grunt of its master, I could have been alone in the world.

  Suddenly the horse pricked up his ears, and, in the next moment, another cart came round the bend in the road to face us. It was pulled by an equally ancient animal. The driver stopped, and after giving me a curious glance, greeted us. My carter spoke to him in Catalan, while they both looked at me, and the new driver, frowning, jerked his head back over his shoulder.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  The carter cleared his throat, and spat over the side of the cart. ‘There are soldiers in Llavorsí,’ he growled. ‘They have come an hour ago. Fascists.’

  Oh, Jesus! My heart began to pound. I didn’t know what to do. ‘Is there a back road?’ I asked, feeling breathless. The carter gave a short sarcastic laugh, and shook his head. The other man said something else. The two carters chatted for a moment, and then my man turned to me. ‘You could get out now, and go through the trees.’ He nodded to the steep slope beside the road. ‘My friend tells me that strangers were in a house in the village, but have left now. Is that why you are going to Llavorsí?’

  I nodded cautiously.

  ‘He believes they are on the hills somewhere. Perhaps in a shepherd’s hut.’

  ‘Are the soldiers looking for them?’

  ‘He does not think so.’ He narrowed his eyes when he looked at me. ‘Is there a price on their head?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly, not wanting to offer him any opportunities. ‘My friend is a reporter. An Englishman. I don’t know about any others.’ This was translated, and I heard the word Anglès. Which meant English, I supposed, and I didn’t know whether they thought that this was good or bad. But with a lugubriously muttered farewell, the other man clicked up his horse and went on his way, and I was left sitting in the cart trying to make a decision. It didn’t take me long. I hoisted my rucksack on to my shoulders, and climbed down. The carter watched me, then pointed with his short whip to the hillside. ‘Go through the trees,’ he repeated. ‘Someone will know where your friend is.’

  He clicked at the horse, and would have left but I grabbed the reins. ‘Remember,’ I warned. ‘The priest, and God will know if you don’t get the doctor.’ He scowled, and, jerking the reins, urged the horse to move on, leaving me alone on the empty road.

  My legs were still aching from the last two days, but I turned my face to the hillside and set off. It was hard, climbing up through oak and silver fir and struggling through rhododendron and Pyrenean broom. Startled birds flew out of the canopy above me, giving away my position to anyone watching, but I didn’t think that anyone was, and I pushed on. My legs were even more scratched, and felt like jelly, but soon I was high above the road, and had rounded the bend. Through the trees I could see Llavorsí in the valley below me. It was larger than Ribera; the houses similarly built of grey stone, but there were more of them, and they spread further out beside the river and up on to the hillside. I could even see a barrier which had been put across the road. It was manned by soldiers.

  I leant against a tree, and wondered in which direction to go. Should I go down into the village, or wander aimlessly around up here to try to find Charlie? As I scanned the hillside my eyes picked out what looked like the wall of a stone building. It was surrounded by trees, and probably not visible from the road below. It was a small house or a shepherd’s hut, perhaps. Was that a likely place? I hitched up my rucksack. It was worth a try.

  The best way to approach it would be from above, I decided, and climbed higher up the hillside. The trees didn’t grow as close here, allowing me to make better time, but now and then spurs of granite rock stood in my way, which required an extra effort to get over. I knew that if anyone looked up I would sometimes be visible, a figure standing out and moving across the valley, up, away from the road. With binoculars they would see I wasn’t a shepherd. With that realisation in mind, I kept low and crawled through the bushes, and over rocks, until I could see the roof of the hut about thirty feet below me.

  There was no sound, nor any movement from the building, and I sat with my back against a rocky ledge, gathering my breath and staring down at it. Was anyone there? Was Charlie there?

  I had to find out. I looked down at the village and saw the soldiers lazily leaning against the barrier, enjoying the late afternoon sun. I moved deeper into the trees, in the direction of the hut. It was in a clearing, a flat patch of scrubby ground surrounded by saplings and small rocks. A sheep path led away from it, down into the village. Standing in the trees, with the door of the hut only about a few feet away across the grass, I took a deep breath. I was scared at what I might find. Suppose Charlie was sick, like Paul, or even worse . . .

  Just go, I told myself, and stepped out of the trees into the clearing.

  ‘Hello, my darling.’

  For a moment I didn’t move. It couldn’t be, could it? I spun round and there he was, behind me. Amyas, as beautiful as he’d ever been. My Amyas.

  ‘Amyas,’ I breathed, disbelieving. Was this figure standing in the trees something dragged out of my imagination? A god come to rescue me? For a moment I thought that I was going slightly mad, exhausted by the trek over the mountains and upset by Paul’s sudden collapse, but there could be no doubt. The figure in front of me was real. ‘Amyas?’ I whispered his name again. ‘Is that you?’

  He nodded, and smiled, and I threw myself into his arms. All the questions that were forming in my head were put aside as I simply revelled in his presence. His arms felt strong as they held me close to him, and when he lowered his face and his lips pressed against mine, they were as firm and passionate as they’d ever been.

  ‘You are a tease, Persephone,’ he said, when we stopped kissing. ‘I’ve been looking for you for the last two hours. I’ve been all over this damn hillside.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ I was gaping at him, almost wanting to cry with relief.

  ‘The carter told me. I met him in the village. His description of you was so accurate that I didn’t have a moment’s doubt.’

  ‘The carter?’ Oh, Christ, I wondered. Who else has he told?

  ‘What about the soldiers?’

  ‘They’re in the village. They’re looking for deserters.’

  I bit my lip
and looked back over my shoulder to the hut. ‘Charlie? Have you seen him?’

  ‘He’s in there.’ He nodded towards the hut. ‘I brought him this far, but he’s got a fever and can’t get much further. He was shot a couple of weeks ago in some sort of skirmish south of here. I found him at a field station and spirited him away before he was discovered for what he was. The Republican commanders don’t take kindly to being played for fools. They know that if he gets out he’ll report honestly, and some of their practices are as bad or worse than those of the Nationalists.’

  ‘Where was he shot? I mean, where on his body?’

  ‘Shoulder. He’s lost a lot of blood, and I think the bullet might have chipped a bone.’

  ‘I must go to him.’ And I turned, and started to hurry to the hut.

  Amyas kept up with me. ‘There is somebody else in there,’ he said, his voice unnaturally hesitant, but I wasn’t interested. I needed to see Charlie.

  He was lying on a trestle bed, which was pushed against the stone wall of the hut. In the gloom of the interior it was hard to see him clearly, but I could make out enough to know that he was damaged, and sick. He had lost an awful lot of weight, and two red spots flushed his sunken cheeks, the colour continuing down into his neck. A dirty bandage was wrapped across his naked shoulder and chest, and a dark patch of dried blood indicated the location of his wound.

  ‘Well, Charlie Bradford,’ I said lightly. ‘What have you been up to?’

  He opened his eyes. ‘Blake?’ he said and gave me one of his sweet smiles. ‘You’ve taken your bloody time. What kept you?’

  ‘Fool,’ I laughed, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  Amyas had followed me into the hut, and stood watching. ‘He’s been waiting for you ever since I sent that telegram.’

  ‘You sent it?’ I asked.

  Amyas nodded. ‘Well, as you see, he wasn’t exactly able to.’

  There was a movement on the other side of the room, and I turned sharply. A woman was sitting on the dusty floor, watching me. The room was dim, with only the twilight coming in through the glassless window, but I could see that she was young, with long black hair and a pretty, heart-shaped face. She struggled to her feet, grunting with the effort, and at first I thought that she must be sick too, but when she straightened up, I saw that she was heavily pregnant.