by Ann Bridge
He did. Slowly, moodily, dawdling along with many pauses, as if anxious to kill time, he was presently within about fifty yards of her. Crouched under her block, Rosemary’s small figure was not very conspicuous—it was only then that he appeared to see her. When he did, once more that curious tenseness seemed to make all his body taut; he walked rapidly up to her. When he was quite close, he evidently recognised her, for his rather stern expression broke into a swift smile. But his eyes remained watchful.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle! We meet again!” he said.
“Mais oui, Monsieur,” Rosemary said, smiling too.
“May one ask from where you come?” he asked, and now his eyes were not only watchful, they were suspicious.
Readily, the girl slipped out her white lie.
“I came down from the road,” she said. “My Father has gone to play golf at Chiberta—I shall join him for tea.”
“Tiens,” he said. “And you sit out in the cold, on such a day? For what?”
“I’m doing my Spanish,” she said, still easily, though by now his expression was beginning to frighten her a little—and she held out her copy-book.
“Alors, you learn Spanish?” he said, taking it from her, with an air of casualness, and a faint smile—and as if in idle curiosity, he began to turn the leaves. As he did so, a remarkable change came over his face.
“Who wrote this?” he asked sharply, holding the cheap copybook out to her.
She glanced at the page. It was one of the Condesa’s exercises.
“My friend, the Condesa de Verdura. She often sets me things; she makes them better, more colloquial than my teacher,” she answered.
“Tiens,” he said again, and sat down beside her under the block of concrete. “And since when is she your friend?” he asked.
“Since she came to St.-Jean from Madrid; she is staying in our hotel. Why, do you know her?” the girl asked curiously.
An oddly wistful expression came over the man’s fine face—he paused for a moment before replying.
“She is—a very old friend,” he said slowly. He smiled, a sudden brilliant smile. “I am glad that she has found a friend in her exile. You like her?”
“I love her,” the girl said eagerly. “I think everybody must—she is so beautiful and so sweet. I wish she were not going away.”
“Is she going away?” he asked, casually—but his eyes were suddenly intent. The girl studied his face curiously—an idea, a suspicion, was beginning to form in her mind. This man had a delicate high-bridged nose, and those surprising blue-grey eyes under his black hair and brows. What was it Raquel had said about Juanito?—“Like me, and with blue eyes; but black.”
But she remembered to go on playing her part.
“But yes—she is returning to Spain, to Burgos or to San Sebastian. He is released, you know—the Conde, I mean.”
“It is true? No, I did not know. Since when?”
“Since a few days. It is Mr. Milcom who has arranged all that—her friend—the one who brought her out from Madrid.” (She could not resist the sweet pleasure of mentioning Milcom.)
“Ah yes. And you know him also, this Milcom? What is he like?”
“He’s a fascinating person,” Rosemary said, thoughtfully. “Very clever; and good—and very sad, somehow. He’s a journalist, of course.” She smiled suddenly. “In Madrid they call him ‘El Melancolico’.”
“Vraiment? And why?”
“His face—because he looks so gloomy. But he isn’t gloomy in himself; not always. I think it’s that he sees the—the dreadfulness of things so clearly. He’s—” she hesitated. “He’s a pitying person,” she finally brought out.
He bent dark brows upon her.
“You are a close observer, I remark,” he said. “Is this Milcom also a friend of yours?”
A curious expression, brilliantly triumphant, came over the young girl’s face.
“Yes,” she said ringingly. “Not so much as hers, of course—who would be? But we are friends.”
He looked at her clear face, her immense eager eyes, with their wonderfully candid expression, and smiled his sudden smile again.
“I should like to be your friend,” he said. “Perhaps one day, after the War, I shall be. Meanwhile”—he stretched out his hand for her copy-book, “may I begin by writing you a devoir in Spanish? If you cannot translate it, I am sure that your friend the Condesa de Verdura will help you. Perhaps you will show it to her?”
“Of course I will,” the girl said, a little breathlessly. Her heart was beginning to thump again. Was it? It must be. Incredible as it seemed, it must be. “Will it be very difficult?” she asked.
He looked up—he was already scribbling away on his knee.
“Fairly difficult,” he smiled. “It is a story. Now let me write.”
They sat for some minutes in silence, the man writing, the girl examining his face, bent over the book. In profile, the likeness to Raquel was really marked. No, there was no doubt at all in her mind. But, as usual, she decided to say nothing to him of her knowledge. Probably he guessed that she must guess, she thought, but considered that she was too young and insignificant to matter. Being young and insignificant was very convenient, and made life very amusing, Rosemary had long ago decided.
“Tenez,” he said at last, handing back the book—“There you are. You must try and do it yourself first, and only when it is finished, show it to her. When will that be? To-morrow?”
“I don’t expect she’ll be back by to-morrow,” Rosemary said.
“Comment? Is she not at St.-Jean?”
“Not at this moment—she is gone to Paris, to see about getting her exit permit for Spain. She only went three days ago, and Mr. Milcom thought it might take some time.”
His face clouded at her words.
“So—so,” he muttered to himself—“and of course I do not hear! Inhumanity!” Then, recollecting himself, he turned to her with a little smile.
“The French are very difficiles, these days,” he said—“so many restrictions!”
Rosemary agreed—but she did not think it was the inhumanity of the French that he had been muttering about; she thought his vexation was much more probably—and more reasonably—directed at the Duquesa and the Old Parrot. The one certainly, the other probably, must have known both about Raquel’s immediate journey, and her impending departure—and evidently had not told him.
“Alors,” he said, getting up—“I must go. Au revoir, Mademoiselle. Give Raquel my love, and tell her that I shall see her soon, in Spain.”
Rosemary decided to risk it.
“Whose love?” she asked.
He tapped the copy-book in her hand.
“That will tell her,” he said. “Au revoir, Mademoiselle!” And he walked off.
When he had gone, in the direction of Biarritz, Rosemary glanced at her watch. Gracious—ten past four already! She must hurry. She hastened inland through the pine trees, hit the road and plugged along it towards the Chiberta Golf Club.
It was another three days before the Condesa returned from Paris, armed with her exit permit. Rosemary had in the meantime, as may be supposed, made as complete a translation of the devoir as she could, and with the help of a dictionary it was pretty accurate. It was really in the form of a story, and began simply: “Once upon a time there was a man called Manuel Jereda who dearly loved a woman called Raquel, but for reasons of duty he could not always see her when he wished to.” It was couched in terms which might just as well have referred to a lover as to a brother, except for certain references to their childhood; he hoped always—“perhaps even on her next birthday, to strew flowers over her where she lay sleeping, as in the old dear days.” The references to his “work” and his “duty” were such as he might well have supposed would convey nothing to a third party—but to Rosemary, knowing what she did, they were significantly clear. When he had accomplished “one last and most important task” he hoped to return to his own people. The little tale was ele
gantly, even brilliantly done—but at the last his love and longing had broken through. “Oh, my dearest, my little darling one,” he wrote in a final paragraph, “all this has been so hard, for you and for me—but soon, soon, we shall be together again.”
Rosemary chose her moment rather carefully to show this document to Raquel. Even when the Condesa was in her room, the Duquesa had a way of popping in and out all the time—so much so that Rosemary wondered if she herself had fallen under the suspicion of the alert Spanish woman. It was quite possible, she argued—after three months spent in France, in the company of that disillusioned breed of men, journalists, Rosemary had few illusions left about the French; she did not suppose for a moment that the Bayonne authorities were any more reliable than the rest of their compatriots—there might easily have been a leak about who was responsible for the closing of the Grotte de Sare. Anyhow, late at night on the day of the Condesa’s return she went, already in a dressing-gown, and tapped on her door. She found her in bed, and alone, and asked her to come along to her, Rosemary’s room. “I have something important to show you—please, you must come,” she said urgently.
A little reluctantly, the Condesa got up and went with her—and curled herself up on the foot of the bed. “Well, what is it, this important thing?” she asked, with a smiling hint of mockery.
But smile and mockery alike left her exquisite face when Rosemary handed her the shabby copy-book, folded open at the pencilled devoir. She glanced at it, stared at it with astonished eyes, and then with a lovely gesture clasped it to her breast, and over it faced the girl in violent agitation, with a stream of questions whose urgency made them sound actually angry.
“What is this? Where did you get this? Why is it in your book? What does it mean? How can you have come by it? You can’t have seen him?”
“Yes, I did see him,” the young girl said steadily. “Quite by accident I——”
“Where? When? It’s impossible!”
“Oh, please be quieter. Listen, and I will tell you. Don’t raise your voice—we don’t want people to hear.”
“Go on then—go on!”
“It was three days ago—I was on the Chambre d’Amour, doing my Spanish, and he came by …”
“Juanito? There in Biarritz? Oh my God! And I was away.”
“Raquel darling, do be quiet! I can’t tell you if you keep on interrupting. Yes, he came by, and we talked.”
“Why should he talk with you?” Raquel asked.
“Because we’d met before, outside the Grotte de Sare some time ago; I was sitting there alone—the others had gone off—and he came out of the Grotto. And I guessed then that he was a spy.”
“You too know this? How?”
Poor sweet, you wouldn’t make much of a conspirator, Rosemary thought. Aloud—“I didn’t know it then—I just guessed,” she said. “And of course then I didn’t know who he was.”
“And whom did you tell? Your father? This Crump person?”
“No—I didn’t tell anyone, of course,” the girl said, almost scornfully. “He was so splendid, I didn’t want him to be caught, if he was ten times a spy! We just talked, and he didn’t worry about me, because I’m so young—and I went away and thought about him, and that was all. But when we met on the Chambre d’Amour the other day, of course he recognised me, and so we talked again.”
“Well, and then? How did you know it was Juanito?”
“I wasn’t sure, at first. He was rather suspicious, and he asked me what I was doing, and I said learning Spanish, and showed him my book. And then, naturally, he saw your writing in it, and got very excited, and asked whose the writing was? So I told him it was yours, and that we were friends, and that you are in the hotel.”
“And he did not ask to see me?” Raquel asked with hurt eyes.
“I told him you were in Paris, of course,” Rosemary replied—she was not going to embark on the story of the Old Parrot if she could help it, to Raquel. “And I told him about the Conde being in Burgos, and that you were going back to Spain. He didn’t know any of that. And he told me to give you his love, and to tell you that he should see you soon, in Spain.”
“And he said then who he was?”
“No. He never said. Only that you would know who had written the story. But he is so like you that I guessed—that, and the way he talked about you, and his knowing your writing. I’m not sure that he realised that I should guess—I think perhaps he hoped I should think he was your boy-friend,” said Rosemary with great naturalness.
Raquel smiled faintly at that.
“Did he say when he was going back himself?” she asked then, eagerly.
“The next day or the day after—that would have been yesterday.”
“Ah yes. Then he is gone now.” She sighed a little. “How did he look—well?” she asked, with a renewal of eagerness.
“Very well—tired about the eyes, a little,” Rosemary said.
“And dressed how? In uniform?”
“Goodness no! In plain civvies, and an overcoat. The time before he was in peasant’s dress.”
“And you liked him? Isn’t he nice?”
“He’s an enchanting person,” the girl said sincerely. “He said he hoped to be friends with me one day.”
The Condesa asked a few more questions, the foolish simple questions of hungry love, and then Rosemary tore the two precious sheets out of her exercise-book, and the Condesa took them away to her room. Next day she left for San Sebastián. But before she went she sought Rosemary out again, questioned her further about the encounter at the Grotte de Sare, and thanked her for her silence and discretion. At the last she flung her arms round the English girl’s neck, and burst into tears.
“I shall miss you,” she sobbed out. “I have been so happy here—and you were part of it. And they both liked you,” she added inconsequently.
She was going by car with the Duquesa as far as Irún, and on from there by train. Rosemary obtained her mother’s permission to go in to Hendaye on the bus to see the Condesa off at the Bridge. Ethel Oldhead herself was not able to come—Mr. Oldhead had got a touch of influenza, and his rheumatism had flared up after that cold afternoon of golf at Chiberta; the Doctor was talking of getting him away to some place with a warmer climate, like Vernet or Amélie-les-Bains, where the sulphur waters would help his complaint. The cold had fairly reached St.-Jean by now; on that Christmas Eve frost gripped the ground, and sparse flakes of snow were whirled by a bitter wind out of a harsh and leaden sky as Rosemary sat in the bus, bowling along the grey road between the blotched creamy trunks of the leafless plane trees towards Hendaye. She sat looking out of the window, her two little farewell gifts for Raquel—a bottle of Lenthéric Eau-de-Cologne and a big bunch of violets—on her lap, thinking of her first drive along that road with Mr. Crumpaun, not quite three months ago. How much had happened in that short time: her friendship with the Condesa, the Condesa’s love affair with Milcom, and their separation; the sudden growth of her own love for the sad-faced journalist, the curious series of accidents which had brought her into contact with Juanito, and to some knowledge of his activities. Well, it was all over now, she supposed, as she climbed out of the bus and walked down to the Bridge—when she had first stood here by the barrier, she had never even seen any of them, and now she would never see any of them any more. She would be dragged off to Vernet or Amélie or some lousy unknown watering-place, she thought, shivering in the cold wind, and would never see or hear anything again, ever, of these people who had filled her life—her dear Crumpet, Raquel, Juanito, and Milcom.
But there she was wrong.
Chapter Eleven
On the Crest
The long-awaited Franco offensive broke round about the New Year. The world has heard—but has probably since forgotten—of that bitterly-fought campaign, and the gradual tightening of the net round the doomed triangle, hemmed in between the French frontier, the advancing enemy, and the sea; the gradual falling back—back to Tarragona, back to Bar
celona, back to Figueras.
It was not really part of James Milcom’s assignment to cover the actual fighting in the field, but he did this for the first two or three weeks. Then he went back to Barcelona to keep in touch with the government, and when the evacuation of that city too was decided on, he realised that the time had come to get out to France, and meet the retreating cabinet and armies there. But he did not go by road—he got on board a dirty old orange-boat, crammed with refugees, which made a risky but successful getaway and arrived at Port Vendres, the first harbour beyond the frontier, at the end of January 1939.
It was at Port Vendres that he had landed with Raquel four months before, and from the sea, as the orange-boat steamed in, the aspect of the charming little place was unaltered; the pale multi-coloured houses still clustered thickly round the port, and straggled sparsely up the steep green-grey slopes behind-autumn, winter, spring and summer bring only the slightest of changes to a Mediterranean landscape. But in James’s heart it was midwinter. In spite of activity, excitement and danger, the days had crept past with leaden slowness since he parted from Raquel, and his misery over the defeat of the cause he cared for with such intensity joined hands with his private misery. But activity, excitement and danger had at least kept his thoughts at bay to some extent—now, leaning on the rail of the boat, for the moment with nothing to do, the sight of the little town brought back such a flood of memories of the last time he steamed in there, with her at his side, that his wretchedness was almost unbearable. He had heard no word of her—he hadn’t expected to; but whenever other preoccupation left him off guard for a moment, his mind jabbed at him with pictures of her and the Conde together, with a desperate speculations as to how she was solving her end of the problem—however much he fought them off, they returned again and again, stinging like angry bees; they did so now. To get some relief in action he went below, making his way through the stinking crowded passageways, collected his bag, and brought it up on deck.