Quince

by David Rees

  ‘And Goicoechea would have been after us both. We’d have both been caught. And it wouldn’t be a year in prison for me … I’d have been executed at once!’

  ‘We might have given him the slip. You’ve shaken off people before … you’re an expert! So I’m told.’

  Pedro shook his head. ‘The risk was huge.’

  ‘You betrayed me in order to save yourself. Do you call that love? You don’t know the meaning of the word!’

  ‘I do love you. I’ve always loved you. I always will.’

  ‘Balls! Balls! Don Miguel was right … you don’t have any!’

  There was a flash of annoyance in Pedro’s eyes, but he suppressed it. ‘I can understand your hurt,’ he said. ‘But the ordeal is over. You survived; you’re here. It’s finished. We can clean the slate and start again. You can move into my room … now … I’ll come with you. This old car ― he gave it a kick ― ‘can wait till tomorrow, or next week. Let’s fuck ourselves silly … you always said it was best in the afternoon. I’ll buy you some clothes, live with me, here in Paris … your languages can get you work; there’ll be no problem … Stephen … we can begin our married life!’

  ‘Yes,’ Stephen said. ‘It’s over. And I don’t mean my ordeal in Spain. That will never be over. Us! We’re finished! I’m returning to England. Tonight.’

  ‘You’d throw away the most precious thing you and I ever had? Are ever likely to have?’

  ‘Sentimental twaddle! You threw it away … oh, so very carelessly … one autumn evening in Cádiz. Do you remember? Besides … I don’t suppose you’ve found it difficult to get another man.’

  Pedro shrugged his shoulders. ‘For sex, that’s all. I’ll send him packing.’

  ‘So he lives with you! I should have known it wouldn’t take you long … who is he? Some little French boy as naive as I was? His head turned by tales of derring-do? How I captured Zahara, by Red Pedro Badajoz. How I successfully impersonated a fascist. How I, the Lynx, defeated General Araquistain. How I ruled a whole city! Have you told him how many men you killed in cold blood, that you cut the balls off the police chief, that you did nothing to stop your lover being sentenced to death?’

  ‘And have you been celibate? How many men have been up your arse?’

  ‘Any man who wants it is welcome to it. That’s how highly I rate it now!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what either of us have been doing,’ Pedro said. ‘It’s supremely unimportant! Stephen … we’re here. Together!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe … I don’t believe you’ve stopped loving me.’

  ‘You can start believing it. I feel … contempt. Disgust. Pity. That’s all.’

  ‘But you’d like to go to bed with me, wouldn’t you! You can’t hide that!’

  ‘I’m not even trying to hide it!’ Stephen screamed. ‘I only have to look at you and my cock’s stiff! You can see it bursting out through these rags! It’s wet already! I might even come … I want to lean over that car, and…’ He was crying. Pedro moved towards him, touched him and bent down to kiss him, but Stephen grabbed his arm and held him off. ‘Don’t add rape to the list of your crimes,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten you executed Sebastian and his cronies - in public? It was a bit severe, wasn’t it?’ Pedro looked as if his face had been slapped. ‘You touched me,’ Stephen went on. ‘Do you see the effect? I’ve come. It’s all over my trousers.’

  Pedro smiled. ‘I’m sure you have plenty in reserve … as usual.’

  ‘But it’s not for you! Tell me … how did you get out of Spain?’

  ‘I walked. It took me two weeks just to reach the boat … holing up during the day, travelling at nigh. Yes, I robbed and killed … for food. Crossing the lines wasn’t easy, but I managed it. After that… . well, in the Republic Red Pedro is famous. A hero. I was given as much food and drink as I could swallow, and a free ride to Barcelona … I said I had to get there to contact other anarchists, in Barcelona … the chaos! It was obvious we’d lost the war. I stole a bicycle and made my way up the coast Then I walked through the Pyrenees. I was half dead when I got to Paris … I was ill for nearly a month.’

  ‘Do you think you’re a hero?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘No. I deserted … a rat leaving a sinking ship.’

  ‘That bothers you more than deserting me?’

  ‘Stephen…’

  ‘In England I’m going to start writing a book ― about my experiences in Spain, and I won’t spare you. Yes, I think it may sell very well! After that… there’ll be another war. I shall volunteer to fight.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘What happens to you I won’t know about. And I won’t want to know.’ That’s not true, he yelled inside himself. I’ll always want to know! Always!

  ‘Are you travelling to England dressed in those rags? Pedro asked.

  ‘Why not? I haven’t any money.’

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘Two francs.’

  That won’t even get you out of Paris.’

  ‘José will lend me the fare.’

  ‘He has nothing.’

  ‘In which case I’ll have to sell my body. Or … you can lend it to me. Give it to me. You owe me a lot, one way or another.’

  ‘I do?’ Pedro opened his wallet and counted out a handful of notes. ‘Buy yourself some decent clothes. Then come back here. We’ll go to my room, and ― ‘

  ‘You haven’t listened to a single word I’ve said! Let alone the spaces between the words or the unsaid things underneath. Well … thanks for the pay-off, Judas. Thirty pieces of silver, for services rendered. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to charge for sex. Maybe I’ll do it again.’

  ‘Stephen!’

  This is the last time we’ll ever see each other. I mean it!’

  ‘You’ll be back. In an hour or two.’

  ‘I shan’t be wanting this.’ He threw the ring Pedro had given him onto the garage floor. ‘Salud … salaud.’

  There was enough to buy trousers, a sweater, a shirt, socks, sandals, underwear― and a ticket to England. He didn’t dispose of his rags: they were added to the contents of his bundle. In a corner seat of an empty compartment on the train, he looked at, but did not see, the countryside of Europe, blurred and dull in the heavy rain, rushing past him. As he neared Dunkirk he began once more to cry.

  He went to his parents, but he did not stay there long. Their loving concern was oppressive, and they asked him too many questions he didn’t feel like answering. The account he gave of his life was rigidly censored. Shocked by his appearance, they tried to fill him up with food he didn’t want to eat. He needed silence and solitude, and somewhere to impose order on the chaos; it was impossible at home, so he moved on, to Cambridge. He presented himself at Professor Potts’s door in his prison rags; the old man, tired and sick, thought he was some pauper begging for food.

  ‘Stephen Faith, sir!’

  ‘What about him? Where is he?’

  ‘Here. It’s me.’ he said, smiling,

  ‘Jesus God. Come in.’

  He told his story ― everything, every detail ― in Spanish, which amused and delighted the professor, who just occasionally queried the Andalusian speech, then bowed to Stephen’s superior knowledge, Stephen’s request for a room to live in for a while, so he could have somewhere to write his book, made the old man almost bustle with energy. Dr Prendergast upstairs was still far from dead, though now ninety-four: that had been the reason for Dr Potts’s depression ― he would never move into those superior rooms with the grandstand vista of the Backs. But the thought of Stephen living in college gave him almost as much pleasure as would the sight of the ancient Professor of Physics being lowered into his tomb.

  ‘Can you pull the right strings?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘If I can’t do that when I’ve given over forty years of myself to this university, then… You are the most brilliant student I have ever had! No one I’ve taught in all that time speaks the language so fluently! None of them has
seen such dramatic history at first-hand. Good God! You only want a room … we ought to make you a Fellow!’

  It was arranged.

  ‘You are extraordinarily tough and resilient,’ the professor said. ‘And remarkably adaptable. The torture left no ill effects on you?’

  ‘None … physically, that is. I didn’t even get pneumonia from the cold water, and the weals on my arse… no sign of them.’

  ‘I hope your father is proud of you.’

  ‘No. I don’t think he is.’

  ‘Is he aware of your … mmm … sexual inclinations?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Then I can’t see why the dickens… ‘ The old man tapped him on the knee. ‘You’ll have to keep all that out of your book, you realise.’

  ‘The homosexuality? Of course! I know perfectly well that men such as I, in order to exist, have to pretend not to exist.’

  Stephen stayed all spring and summer, writing. On the thirty-first of March the war ended. Long expected ― like its beginning ― and much wished for, it was, also like the start, a shock when it happened. The manner of it was such a surprise: the Republic didn’t go down with a fight, but a coup d’état in Madrid (a military revolt again) led to a humiliating surrender. Dr Negrín’s government collapsed and his ministers ― those who were still in Spain ― escaped to France. The Republican armies demobilised themselves, abandoned the fronts, and went home. It was all over, apart from the reprisals ― the execution and imprisonment of thousands. Franco was no Lincoln, not in the least concerned to bind up his nation’s wounds.

  Spain thus dealt with, the Fascist dictators of Europe turned to other conquests: during the first week in April, Mussolini invaded Albania. (Hitler had jumped the gun and occupied Czechoslovakia a fortnight previously.) The stage was set for World War Two, and when five months later Hitler marched into Poland, Franco miraculously kept Spain out of it.

  Stephen finished his book. Professor Potts read it, suggested various alterations― some of which Stephen agreed to ― and wrote an introduction. He took on the task of finding a publisher, a job for which its author, who had volunteered for military service, had no time. Stephen fought with the Eighth Army in Egypt and Libya, and was injured, though not seriously, at El Alamein. He rejoined his unit when his wounds had healed, and saw action in Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, and Germany itself. Though remaining a private throughout, he had what is called a ‘good’ war.

  His book was published, and it had a modest success.

  The Spanish exiles were not so lucky. After the Germans occupied Paris, they were rounded up by the Gestapo, and many, such as Largo Caballero, the prime minister before Negrín, were sent to concentration camps. Others ― including Julián Zugazagoitia, Negrín’s Minister of the Interior, and Luis Companys, the President of Catalonia ― were returned to Spain, where Franco had them shot. José and Cristina were deported to Auschwitz, José died there, but Cristina survived, and in 1946 she went to England to live with Isabella. Carlos and Pedro had to serve in the French army. They were both lucky enough to escape in the rout at Dunkirk, and spent the rest of the war with the Maquis ―Pedro’s guerrilla experiences proving particularly useful. He became a hero a second time. When the Germans were finally driven out of France, they returned to their old jobs in Paris. Pedro found a lover, and Carlos married his French girlfriend, who had already born him two children.

  Carlos was able to buy the house where his parents had rented a couple of rooms. The one quince seed that successfully germinated Cristina had planted in the garden during the spring of 1940. At the end of the war it was a tree. Stephen, staying there briefly in 1952, spent hours sitting in its shade.

  It was the only time in all the rest of his life that he saw Pedro. They had dinner in a restaurant on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, and a few drinks in a bar afterwards. Stephen was thirty-six, Pedro nearly forty-one. Love had died long ago, but bitterness had not. Like Spain, Stephen said to himself: all the great passions that caused the Civil War ― the Falange, anarchism, communism, liberalism, socialism, democracy, republic, monarchy ― died with it, and Spain, ruled by Francisco Franco, the cold, dull Octavius Caesar of twentieth-century politics, slept, as the princess slept under the spell of the bad fairy.

  ‘Do you have a lover now?’ Pedro asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Since you … I’ve never needed one.’

  ‘But … don’t you wish to share your life with another man? Think he’s the most marvellous person in the world, that no one else will do … with him thinking the same? Falling asleep, your arms round him, waking and he’s still there…’

  ‘I had him once,’ Stephen lowered his eyes. ‘It didn’t work out… as you very well know. What I want now is to be efficiently serviced by any expert cock.’

  ‘That’s appalling … I’m sorry for you. Do you … do you get what you want?’

  ‘Yes! I meet men in bars, in toilets, in the road in broad daylight sometimes. I stay the night usually, then leave in the morning. I may even get into their beds a second time, a third. The longest was three months, but I packed him in … he was becoming too serious. A nice man, though. A good man.’

  ‘I think it’s very sad,’ Pedro said. ‘Awful!’

  ‘Oh, that’s rot! I’m perfectly happy. I like living alone … I can shut the door on the world whenever I please. I’m not beholden to anybody; I can do exactly what I want, when I want. I like my job ― the BBC pays well. And I’m not even beholden to them. I’m free-lance. I do a little translating … I’m working on Manuel Azaña’s diaries at the moment. I have plenty of friends, and they include Cristina, Isabella and Richard and their children … and Guy Spellman from the consulate in Cádiz; he’s now in our embassy in Oslo. I have money … a house … my health is fine, and as for sex … I’ve had some great sex! And I intend to go on doing so.’

  The whole of London is your brothel? When we could have had ―’

  ‘No, we couldn’t have had.’

  ‘Would you say the way you live … is the result of knowing me? That I caused it?’

  ‘It’s my choice,’ Stephen said. ‘But … yes. Anyway, most human beings are basically selfish shits; I just don’t want to get involved. There are exceptions, of course. You aren’t one of them.’

  ‘I still love you.’

  Stephen was silent for a while, then said, ‘Your problem is … forgive me if this hurts … you’ve never been honest with yourself, Pedro! You don’t love me!You might still have the odd twinge of guilt or remorse, but it’s nothing other than that. Perhaps you do love your Jean-Luc or whatever his name is … but I doubt you feel for him what I once felt for you. I adored you! Iworshipped you! I would have died for you! Listen … if I said drop him now, come to England and live with me, be married to me for ever and ever till death do us part amen, would you jump at the idea?’

  Pedro sipped his drink.

  ‘I rest my case.’ Stephen said.

  In 1986 Stephen returned to Zahara, almost fifty years to the day since his first visit. He was with Isabella, Richard, their eldest daughter Mary, and their three grandchildren. He was seventy ― ex-TV ‘personality’: oddball maker of occasional programmes from the days when television still accommodated such people; acerbic utterer of opinions on late-night intellectual slots; still wheeled on from time to time by Sir Robin to contradict whoever was promoting the Labour, Conservative, or Liberal flavour of the month; a sort of Bennite Baroness Stocks. Franco had died a decade previously: all the older generation had gone, including his own parents, Cristina, and Professor Potts (who did outlive Dr Prendergast ― by a whole year.) Pedro was dead too, and his Jean-Luc. With Franco’s departure the Fascist system disintegrated: Spain was now a democracy again, stable, and rushing headlong into the twentieth century. Its socialist government was building good roads and factories and health centres, and the country was enjoying its status as Europe’s biggest holiday playground.

&nb
sp; Carlos had returned in 1975. His years of friendship with political exiles paid off handsomely: he was elected to the Cortes as the socialist deputy for Zahara de los Membrillos. Despite his age, he had a post in the Gonzalez government, in the Foreign Ministry. José would have been proud of him.

  Zahara was spared the swarms of tourists that now plagued most of Andalucía; what might have magnetically pulled them for a day or two off the busy road from Jaén to Granada ― Bishop Guzmán’s beautifully restored cathedral ― no longer existed; in its place was a parking lot, the clinic, and a huge supermarket. Otherwise little had changed. There was poverty, and exuberant street life; the kids played by the fountain in the Plaza de las Ranas; the Seville Symphony Orchestra performed its three summer concerts in the gardens of the mosque. The Arab tower still dominated the city. Stephen was too old and frail to climb its stairs and inspect the one particularly important spot on its roof, but he could look up at it, and at the Grazalema road, and the mountains, as impassive as ever. He could enjoy as always the heat, the light, the scent of jasmine, the aroma of coffee ― everything.

  They stood outside the Casa Badajoz. The quince tree had gone.

  ‘What vandalism to cut it down!’ Isabella exclaimed. ‘Whoever would dare to do such a thing!’

  ‘Perhaps it died,’ Stephen said. ‘It was old in 1936.’

  ‘I wish we could plant another.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  There’s no discord now. None.’