Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  The Gardes Mobiles saluted the two foreigners politely, and as usual entered into conversation with them. Yes, they had been up here when the Spanish army came up—Mon dieu, quelle confusion!

  “We had luck,” the sergeant said; “right at the head of the column were fifteen auto-mitrailleuses, brand-new. When we saw what the Espagnoles were devising, we ran like madmen, and took them, and pushed them up and over the frontier, where those others could not touch them! Those at least we saved—and after, we slid them down on the snow on planks till we reached the track. Monsieur will have seen the track—without doubt it is his car which stands below on the plateau?”

  James said that it was. “So there was snow there then?”

  “My God, yes, Monsieur!—thirty-six centimetres of snow. And a cold—formidable! And figure to yourself that they had brought with them four thousand wounded, of which half were stretcher-cases.”

  “Good Heavens! What did they do with the wounded?”

  “They? nothing at all! Took them out of the ambulances and laid them on the snow, and then ran the ambulances into the ravine with the rest, and set fire to them. We got them down, we; we sent for lorries to come to the head of the road, and we carried them down, two thousand of them. For nine days and nights, Monsieur, those brave fellows of mine have not taken off their boots! This one”—he pointed to a huge blond Norman, who grinned sheepishly—“had not enough of it, he, with carrying the wounded down; no, when they were all disposed of, I meet him plunging through the snow, giving a pick-a-back to an old peasant woman! She was pulling his ears!—was she not, Georges?”

  Georges, crimson, remained speechless at this onslaught. The sergeant punched him mightily in the back, by way of reassuring him; James asked what became of the wounded?

  “Oh, they were sent on by lorry and ambulance, to hospitals here and there—Perpignan, Narbonne, Toulouse; all but the very worst cases, which we kept here in Prats. Many died—those who had fever. Figure to yourself, Monsieur, the effect of being taken out of the ambulances and laid here in the snow!”

  James asked a few more questions about this extraordinary episode; though he had been in the district the whole time, he had never heard of it. Few journalists, the sergeant told him, had ever been allowed up to the Col d’Ares; for whatever reasons, the whole thing had been kept extremely dark, it was clear.

  Driving down the road again the bandages on the bushes told, now, a more full and terrible story. James parked the car on the Place, as before, and they entered the little town by the big arched gateway; proceeding along the narrow main street they came to a small square, where country carts were unloading hay and other produce, and went into the inn for lunch. In the sunny stuffy upstairs room, where a row of geraniums in the window caught the light and the dust alike, the Capitaine was lingering over a coffee and a fine; he asked how they had fared. It was very late—they had lunch rather quickly, and then set out to find the church. From the square they turned up a narrow alley to the right, which consisted partly of steep cobbles, partly of stone steps; and by a succession of such passages, all swarming with children and cats, they at length reached the relatively flat walk which contours the massive stone wall surrounding the church itself. They followed this till they came to a gate in the wall—passing through, they found themselves in a grassy space where more children played; in the centre rose the lofty grey bulk of the church, reinforced with high narrow buttresses which added to the effect of height. They went in and wandered about the dim interior, admiring the great carved and gilded reredos, the gift of Louis XIV, which is the chief glory of the place, and the leaning statue of the Virgin which is its miracle and pride. An aged and rather snuffy sacristan told them the story. Some years before, when the church was being restored, one of the masons was an ardent atheist; one day while he was at work the church was struck by lightning, and two of the side chapels were wrecked, including that which contained the statue, then vertical. But when the dust settled and the smoke cleared away, there in the midst of the wreckage, unhurt, stood the statue of the Virgin, leaning at an angle in which no natural agency could have supported it—and this and his escape so wrought upon the mason that he abjured his atheism and became a devout Catholic. The old man showed them the rather modest collection of vestments and, in a cupboard, the extraordinary papier-mâché image of the dead Christ, with real hair, which is carried in procession in Holy Week.

  Emerging again into the sunshine, they walked round the east end to the other side of the church. Immediately beyond lay the graveyard, a charming God’s-acre, irregularly shaped, with small walls dividing the various sections, and a pair of cypresses to give it dignity and formality; it commanded a wide view down the valley to the blue flatness of the Mediterranean plain, and up it to that great level snow-covered ridge which blocks the end of the Vallespir like a wall. Here the ridge was quite near, immense and dominating; James, leaning his elbows on a wall in the sun and gazing up at the glittering line of snow against the blue, remembered how he had first seen it—when he sat with Raquel in the inn garden at Arles-sur-Tech, and she had asked him where the end of the world was, and he had idly answered—up at Prats-de-Mollo. He remained there, dreaming, lost in the past, while Rosemary wandered about, examining the grave-stones and the wreaths of bead flowers with visiting-cards, in glazed frames; he was roused by her voice calling to him—“Please, will you come here?”

  She was not in sight from where he stood; rather reluctantly, he moved a few steps, and then saw her. She was kneeling on the ground in a part of the graveyard that he had not noticed before; the stones had been removed and stood propped against the wall—the space where they had been was full of freshly-made graves. On most of them a piece of tricolor ribbon, held down by a pebble, lay on the raw earth; a few had rude crosses stuck at the head, made of two bits of wood roughly nailed together, with names scrawled on them in pencil. Rosemary was kneeling by one of these. At the sound of his footsteps she looked up—“Please come,” she said again.

  This time there was no mistaking the urgency in her voice, and the expression on her face made James hasten to her side; she was very white.

  “Look”—she said as he stood beside her, and pointed to the wooden cross. James stooped to read. On it was written in pencil, in a thick sprawling uneducated hand:

  Le Lieutenant MANUEL JEREDA

  No. 38475

  de l’Armée Républicaine Espagnole

  Mort à l’Hôpital à

  Prats-de-Mollo,

  Le 17 Février, 1939.

  R.I.P.

  For a long moment James stood staring down at it in silence. Mechanically he removed his hat. So this was the end—the end of his long search, the end of Raquel’s hopes and fears. And the end of that brilliant life, the hope of a generation. Ironically, his thought of a moment before came back into his mind—the end of the world; yes, for Juanito Torre de Modero, Prats-de-Mollo had indeed’been the end of the world.

  “Oh, God,” he said.

  Rosemary looked up at him then, her brown eyes blind with tears.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “Poor poor Raquel.” And then with a sob—“And he was such a glorious person—so—so noble.”

  James was greatly astonished by this remark. For the first time, then, it occurred to him to wonder how it came about that Rosemary knew that Manuel Jereda and Juanito were one and the same person. That was strange enough; but she spoke as if she knew him. But before he could say anything she spoke again.

  “You did know, then?”

  “Yes, I knew,” he said. “I told Raquel. But how did you know? Did she tell you?”

  “Oh no,” she said, getting slowly up from her knees. She went over and sat on the low wall beyond the new graves. Behind it, in the field outside, a heap of bead wreaths was piled up against the wall, thrown there, no doubt, when the space was cleared. James followed her.

  “No,” she went on—“I guessed, after I met him.”

  “You met him? Wher
e on earth did you do that?”

  “Once at the Grotte de Sare—and then at the Chambre d’Amour. The first time I wasn’t sure, thought I guessed he was a spy; but the second time I overheard him talking with the Old Parrot, and from what they said I know that he must be Number Seventeen. And then he gave me a letter to her.”

  James couldn’t take it all in. “How came you to know about Number Seventeen at all?” he asked, seizing on at least one point to get clear.

  “Oh, because I heard them all taking about it—Crumpet and Crossey and all. When there was the sabotage. And then we went to the Grotte de Sare, and this man came out of the cave, and went back when he saw the car, and came out another way. And when he saw me he went like this”—she moved her right hand towards her left armpit—“just for a second. Peasants don’t do that. He was pretending to be a peasant.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Nothing—except talk to him, and then persuade Crossey to stop Daddy from having the Grotte stopped up.” She explained about the Arbre de Noël.

  “Good God!” said James. “How extraordinary! You were in on the whole thing. Well—go on. Why did you want to prevent your Father from stopping that passage. If you didn’t know who he was?”

  “Because he was such a splendid person. He—he really was like a God come down to earth, you know.”

  “Was he very like her?” James asked—he couldn’t prevent himself.

  “Not so like—at least I didn’t see it that time. Except his walk; when he walked away, that bothered me—I knew he walked like someone I knew, but I couldn’t get it.”

  “Well, and then?” he prompted her.

  “Oh well, then—quite a long time after, just before Christmas, when there was all that business about the Russian planes coming in—Daddy heard about them, and he remembered that there was that way in and out, up the Arbre de Noël, so he hooshed in to Bayonne and told the French, and they sent Gardes Mobiles to the Grotte, and blocked the whole thing up.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “I expect that did it, really. Oh, why did I have to notice those wretched foot-marks?—and not have the wits to keep my mouth shut? It’s all my fault, really.” She burst into tears. “One should never talk!” she sobbed out.

  Awkwardly, he patted her shoulder. “You couldn’t know,” he said. “Actually you talk less than any woman I ever met.” He paused—she was dabbing her eyes. “Do you mind going on telling me?” he said. “I don’t want to upset you”—what a ridiculous phrase, in the face of this tragedy, this finality! he thought—“but I would like to hear.”

  “It’s all right,” the girl said, giving a final dab to her reddened eyelids. “I’m only being a fool, as usual! Only when I think how it’s ended for him, and what it means to her, I hate myself! Because I’m pretty sure that’s what made him too late to get back to Burgos before the offensive. The Parrot said the delay was dangerous, but that he must go back that once more. I suppose it was about the planes or something. And he cursed the French for being so nosy, and stopping some passage. And it wasn’t the French—it was me and Daddy! Oh—damn, damn!” She wept again, unrestrainedly.

  “But where on earth did you hear all this? And who is the Parrot?” James asked, In natural bewilderment. He really must get to the bottom of this extraordinary story.

  “At the Chambre d’Amour.” She described the mise-en-scène, and how she had overheard Juanito’s conversation with the Old Parrot, and had gone up afterwards to intercept him. “I guessed then that it must be Number Seventeen himself; and when I talked to him, and he asked me about Raquel, I suddenly saw the likeness. He had her nose, and eyes—and she had told me that he was like her, only black.”

  “Yes, she told me that too,” he said. “But—you say he asked about her; how did he know you knew her?”

  “Because of my copy-book—I’d got it along to do some Spanish. And when he saw me that second time he was a bit suspicious, and asked what I was up to—so I showed him the book. And there was some of Raquel’s writing in it—she used to set me exercises, you know. So of course he recognised that. And then he asked about her.”

  “Did he tell you she was his sister?” James was enormously intrigued and astonished at the whole tale.

  “No—he said she was ‘a dear friend.’ And then he wrote me an exercise, as he called it, in the book, and said she would help me to translate it, if I would show it to her. It was while he was writing it that I got to be quite sure who he was—his profile was so like hers; and the man in the exercise was called Manuel Jereda.”

  “But how fantastic! It was the most tremendous risk to take, letting you know all that,” James said.

  “I know. But I think he was simply desperate, he wanted to see her so much. I heard him asking the Parrot if he couldn’t go and see ‘her,’ and I realised after who he meant—he said ‘as she is so near.’ And when I told him that she was in Paris, he was rather upset. He hadn’t heard about the Conde being let out, and her going back, either, till I told him,” said Rosemary unthinkingly.

  “Good Heavens!” said James. “Do you mean to say he heard that from you?”

  “Yes, it does seem extraordinary, doesn’t it? But I’m sure the Parrot and that wretched Duquesa kept him completely in the dark, and her too—she had no idea that he’d been coming to Biarritz; she was furious when she heard that I’d seen him.”

  James remembered his own doubts on this head after his visit to Pablo the barber. Well, they were laid now, once for all. But there were other points he wanted to clear up—these constant references to the Parrot, for instance. He went for that next. Lighting a cigarette—

  “Who is this Parrot you keep on talking about?” he asked.

  She told him that whole story, then, from the expedition up La Rhune, and the two episodes of the photographs, to her drive with Crumpaun, and the closing of the little col, and her final clinching eavesdropping under the sea-wall at the Chambre d’Amour. “Mr. Crumpet was sure the Parrot was the head of the spy racket, even without hearing that last part,” she said at the end. “And so am I. What do you think?”

  “Obviously. I wonder who he is?” James meditated aloud. “Oh well, it makes no difference now. But I think our Intelligence people ought to employ you in the next war,” he said, bending his intense gaze on her. “I never heard such a story in my life!”

  The quick colour flew into her face, warming the clear brown skin.

  “It only just happened like that,” she disclaimed.

  “Oh no it didn’t,” he said. “You were very observant, and intelligent, and discreet—and you kept your mouth shut. If you had shouted about the photographs that first morning at the Bar Basque, your Father would have heard of it, and made a row with the shop, and ten chances to one the Parrot, as you call him, would never have got them from old Jacques at all.” He paused. “Funny!” he exclaimed—“I remember noticing you that morning when you were looking at them—you blushed, and looked angry. I asked you to let me see them, to find out what had upset you—do you remember?”

  Rosemary remembered very well indeed, as she did everything where he was concerned. His request to see the photographs was the first time he ever addressed a remark to her directly—a sacred occasion. She blushed again.

  “Yes, I do,” she said casually. “But look—we’re sitting here talking about how it all happened, and all that; but don’t you think we ought to be finding out more about him? Exactly what he died of, and all that? Someone here must know, the doctor or the nurse. And she will want to know.”

  “Yes,” he said. “De Novelles must have been right, of course —he will have been wounded on the Serge, and come out over the Col d’Ares from Rivas.”

  “Oh, did de Novelles say that?”

  “Yes—didn’t I tell you? Oh no, of course, I wasn’t talking to you about him then. Yes—he was very vague, but he thought he had heard of a Teniente Jereda losing a leg up there, early on.”

  “Oh goodness! And of course he was
in that awful mix-up in the snow. James, we must get hold of the Doctor and find out all about it.”

  “I know,” he said, getting up. He threw away his cigarette. “Yes, we must do that. I’ll just take this down.” And he in his turn knelt by the grave and began to copy the inscription on the rough wooden cross. He heard a little click, and looked round; Rosemary was standing a few paces away—she had taken his photograph. The tears were in her eyes again.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” she said apologetically. “But she will want a picture of his grave, and I think she would like you in it. I’ll take one without, too, when you’ve done.”

  When they had both finished and he was putting away his notebook—“What day is it?” he asked suddenly—“the date, I mean?”

  “The twenty-seventh.” She supposed he wanted to note it down. But instead he walked very slowly over to the wall, leant against it, and remained so, looking down at the grave and its humble cross in silence.

  “Where do you suppose we could get any flowers?” he said at last.

  “Here? I’ve no idea. There’s one pretty poor shop in Amélie.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “No,—that would be too late—we couldn’t get back in time.”

  “Must it be to-day?” he said.

  “Yes.” He looked up at her, thoughtfully—and then, as one who has taken a decision, he spoke.

  “To-day’s her birthday, and his too.”

  “Oh! Oh no.” It was the same tone of pure pity that he remembered so clearly in her voice the day that she ran out after him to the little Phare at St.-Jean.