by John Harris
By afternoon the worst of the fighting seemed to have died. By this time the Americans were trying to arrange an armistice but, knowing the inexorability of Juárez’s law, the Mexicans were not offering themselves as go-betweens; while convinced there was going to be a drive on Mexico City, their troops were moving inland, tearing up the railway track behind them.
By the time darkness came there was only sporadic firing. The Mexican regulars had all left the city but the ex-prisoners and other civilians were still roaming the streets, their pockets full of ammunition, looting shops and shooting at anything that moved.
Slattery and Jesús spent the night on the floor of Parra’s office. Outside, an American marine, squatting with his friends under the arches, was singing hoarsely.
‘I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?’
The following morning Parra brought the information that no Mexican official had still yet dared to offer himself as a go-between.
Apart from occasional shots, by midday the city was totally occupied by the Americans and the streets were reasonably safe, though there was an embarrassing number of dead civilians sprawled in doorways. Dogs and vultures clustered round the bodies and it was the Americans who had to drag them away.
Still not a single Mexican official had come forward to help and in every small plaza crowds were listening to impassioned speeches of hatred. Bricks were thrown through windows and the newspapers were full of fury, claiming the landing was an invasion rather than, as the Americans insisted, only a temporary occupation of Veracruz.
‘Official reaction seems to be varied,’ Horrocks observed blandly. ‘Carranza says Wilson doesn’t know what’s best for Mexicans. Obregón says he’ll fight but he’s not making any move. Villa seems to be the most realistic. He says anything that helps get rid of Huerta is a good thing. I don’t think there’s going to be war after all.’
‘I suppose you’re bloody glad,’ Slattery snapped.
‘Well, at least, the bloody Germans haven’t stirred up what they hoped. Of course, Huerta still has to go, but at least it looks as if it’s not going to be Woodrow Wilson who kicks him out.’
The shooting had died away completely when Horrocks appeared again. He was accompanied by a man in the uniform of a British naval officer.
‘Chap here wants some assistance,’ he pointed out. ‘Thought you might be interested.’
‘You Slattery?’ The naval man spoke with that cheerful arrogance every man in the Royal Navy seemed to possess, from the smallest pink-cheeked midshipman to the most senior admiral. ‘They said you’d served in uniform.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Navy?’
‘Flattering of you to suggest it, but no. Army.’
‘Never mind,’ the other man said condescendingly. ‘Doesn’t matter. We need a little help. We’ve got warships going up to Tampico. It’s a mess up there. The oil tanks have been hit and the place is covered with thick smoke. We’re sending a chap inland to bring out the refugees. Fancy going with him?’
Eleven
Tampico was not a pretty place and possessed few good buildings, and the river water was mixed with spillage from the oilfields which ran down in pale fluorescent streams with debris, foliage, trees and branches to make the movement of small boats difficult. On the opposite side of the river as far as the eye could see there were swamps, trees and heavy undergrowth.
The British admiral didn’t seem to have grasped that Mexicans were different from Europeans. He had protested about women being in the firing line with the soldiers, only to be told by the Mexican officers that if they didn’t allow the women in the men wouldn’t go either. He was full of news from inland, most of it wrong, and Villa’s was obviously the only name he’d heard. ‘We’ve got an officer ashore,’ he said. ‘But our chaps aren’t very good at these frog lingos. I gather you are.’ He made it sound as if being able to speak a foreign language was like contracting an unpleasant disease.
Slattery was introduced to a naval commander called Tweedie, a tall, good-looking man surrounded in abundance by naval mystique, then, full of naval gin and with a Union Jack and a white flag, three of them, Tweedie, Slattery and a Spanish-American called Franco, found the refugees at a wayside station. They were dirty, hungry and tired and meekly did as they were told. As they brought them in, Tweedie and the others assumed the job was finished, but an American officer arrived in a hurry to tell them there were more refugees further along the line and they were taken back to the railhead by American marines. As they set off walking through the intense heat once more, Mexicans were tearing up the track and burning the sleepers.
Eventually they ran into a Mexican patrol which agreed to let them pass, but a mile further on, sweat making damp patches in their clothes and Slattery starting to limp, they ran into an armed mob in ragged clothes.
‘Bandits,’ Franco said.
It didn’t seem to worry Tweedie in the slightest, wrapped as he was in the supreme confidence that everything fell away before the Royal Navy. There were dozens of armed men in the bushes, and rifles were being directed towards them when someone shouted an order and all the Mexicans rose to their feet. There were ten times as many as they had expected, but the officer who had given the order turned out to be a man who knew Franco and he was delighted that no one had fired.
‘Not half as delighted as I am,’ Tweedie observed.
They were passed on to Tejeria, where there were no bandits, just an off-duty officer who provided a locomotive and a truck to take them on to Soledad.
‘Where’s Soledad?’ Tweedie asked.
‘About a hundred miles along the track.’
‘Good God! We might as well go to Mexico City!’
‘I have a feeling we will.’
They were met at Soledad by an officer who turned out be the commanding general for the area. He had been warned of their arrival by telegraph and he admitted that the position in Mexico City was critical, with rioting outside the United States Embassy. ‘There are seven hundred people wanting transport to the coast,’ he said.
Salvoconductos were provided and the little train continued. Slattery had telegraphed ahead and Atty was waiting at the station in the capital, the Studebaker adorned with a large Union Jack.
‘At the moment, me dear,’ he said, ‘’tes a better insurance than the Stars and Stripes.’
He gave them what information he had. ‘The doors of the Consulate have been broken down and they’ve smashed the windows of American businesses and hotels.’
‘Where’s Huerta?’
‘Probably drinking brandy in some café, but with the way things are, I reckon he’s in the National Palace. ’Tes safer.’
He drove them to see the British Minister who was worried about the refugees. ‘I can’t get an interview with Huerta,’ he admitted. ‘But they’ve agreed to run trains to Puerto Mexico with English guards.’
Tweedie wasn’t satisfied and asked for volunteers to take a train direct to Tampico. The embassy was crowded with businessmen anxious about their affairs, and six of the younger ones offered to help at once; they spent the day stuffing the train with provisions – among them, Slattery noticed, a case of whisky and a case of gin.
Collecting passes at the National Palace, Slattery was given a bundle of despatches from the legations and from Huerta himself who handed them over personally. When he returned to the station, the train was waiting with steam up, filled with men, women and children clutching everything they possessed, all of them tired, hungry and frightened. At the last moment, he noticed Atty was still with him.
‘Hadn’t you better be taking the motor back to its garage?’ he asked.
‘I have done.’ Atty said. ‘’Tes locked up safe. I’m coming with ’ee. This train’s for American people scared to stay in Mexico City in case
they get their throats cut. Somebody might think I’m an American people.’
They left late at night and reached Soledad again at noon the next day. It was a sad-looking place with no building higher than one storey. A few limp trees provided the only shade in a street which was shared by pigs, donkeys and chickens. As the train drew to a stop a Federal Officer appeared and said that in their absence in the capital a hundred refugees had been brought to the town – all, he thought, United States citizens.
Instructions were given to hold the train but the driver was nervous and Slattery despatched Atty to his cabin. He noticed he had a revolver as big as a howitzer in his belt.
‘There’s a hotel across there,’ Atty said, pointing to a flat-topped building down the street that seemed to sag under the weight of the dust stuck to it. ‘I’ll take him for a drink. ’Twill stop him leaving without us, and it’s kinder than giving him a bonk on the conk.’
The Americans were housed in a prison, all dirty, miserable, crowded and unhappy. The women had originally been locked in one building and the men in another but nobody had been harmed and they had been imprisoned for their own safety because the mob wanted to lynch them for what was happening in Veracruz. They were in a pitiful state because they had been unable to wash, and when they had asked for food and drink, the Mexican guard had told them not to worry about food because they were going to be shot. They were all scared and almost all of them had had to walk long distances. They had come from places near Orizaba and the Córdoba area.
‘Córdoba?’ Slattery said, alarmed immediately as he remembered Magdalena had been heading there. Then, among the crowding people, he recognised faces from Stutzmann’s company. Their finery was bedraggled and their splendid voices were being used only to wail complaints. Stutzmann himself pushed his way through the mob, his jacket torn, his collar dirty.
‘Where’s Magdalena?’ Slattery asked at once.
Stutzmann looked puzzled. ‘She was with us when we arrived.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘Mein liebe Freund, of course. But it was terrible. The mob set everything on fire. They stopped the show while we were on stage and tried to burn the theatre down. They said they were going to shoot us.’
Worms of worry beginning to crawl in his mind, Slattery watched Tweedie struggling to convince the officer in charge that it was his duty to let the civilians go.
‘Tell him to contact the general,’ he suggested. ‘He let us through to Mexico City. Surely he’ll let us back.’
Another long argument followed. It was largely Tweedie’s autocratic air rather than Slattery’s Spanish that won the day and in the end the officer agreed to send the message.
While Tweedie remained with him to make sure he did as he promised, Slattery pushed through the yelling crowd into the street. He was surprised to see the train driver advancing towards him at a run, his hands in the air, Atty just behind him flourishing his revolver. Seeing Slattery, the driver promptly dodged behind him.
‘I wanted to see ’ee, me dear,’ Atty explained. ‘So I had to bring him, too, in case he tried to bolt. He thinks I’m going to have him shot.’
Between them, they calmed the driver down then Atty blurted out his news.
‘She’s here,’ he said.
‘Who’s here?’
‘Her. Magdalena.’
‘You sure, Atty? She’s not in the prison.’
‘Did ’ee expect she would be? She’s got the other one with her, too.’
‘The other what?’
‘The other bit of fluff. The one I met when she came to the house in the Avenida Versailles that night. There are a few more as well.’
‘For God’s sake, Atty, where are they?’
Atty indicated the hotel and Slattery started to run.
As he approached the door, it burst open and Magdalena appeared. Her expression was a mixture of delight and relief as she flung herself at him. Her face was dirty and devoid of make-up but her head was high and her eyes were bright, and she made a splendid figure in what appeared to be one of her stage costumes, a pale blue dress ruched, gathered and pleated so that it showed every inch and curve of her figure. As he put his arms round her, her expression was one of sheer joy.
‘Fitz! Fitz! Fitz!’ She seemed unable to stop speaking his name. He gestured at the building behind her. ‘Everybody else is in prison. How did you manage a hotel?’
‘I am Magdalena Graf.’ She spoke without pride, simply making a statement which she clearly considered should be obvious. ‘I threatened and bribed. I sang to them. I pretended to be a helpless woman and you know how important Mexicans are when they think they’ve got a woman to protect.’
‘How did you explain Amaryllis? She’s there too, Atty said.’
Her face split in a smile. ‘I told them she was my sister. She acted the part very well.’
‘I can believe that, too.’
‘Have you come to take us away?’
‘There’s a train at the station. This is the driver.’
As she turned to him, the driver swept off his cap and bowed.
‘I think we’d better get you to the train, in case the officer at the prison changes his mind. He didn’t seem very certain.’
She nodded soberly, her effervescent spirit dying quickly. ‘Are you in love with Amaryllis, Slattery?’
‘No.’
‘She said not but I didn’t believe her. She’s very beautiful.’
He laughed and kissed her cheek. She stared at him for a moment then she turned back towards the hotel. After a couple of steps, she stopped, swung back abruptly and kissed him on the mouth. As she vanished through the door, they heard a woman’s plaintive whine through the window.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To safety.’ Magdalena’s voice came briskly.
‘The chap on the white horse is here.’ This time the voice belonged to Amaryllis. ‘He’s got the reprieve in his gauntlet.’
‘I don’t want to go. It’s dangerous.’
‘Do you want to be put in prison?’ Magdalena’s voice was sharp, high and splendid, and Slattery guessed that as usual she was acting a little.
‘They wouldn’t dare. Not with a British subject.’
There was the sound of a slap and Amaryllis’ voice again. ‘Don’t you believe it. Get on your feet or I’ll tell them you run a whorehouse and you’re looking for customers. They’ll be after you like rats up a drain.’
Slattery was still wondering by what chemistry these two imperious beings had managed to become friends when the women began to appear. They looked tired and bedraggled and one of them, plump and overweight, was being pushed ahead by Amaryllis, who was stumbling a little because the heel of one of her shoes was missing.
She beamed at Atty and the engine driver and then at Slattery. ‘Good morning, old Paddy,’ she said gaily. ‘We managed to quell the mutiny.’
Twelve
As the reply they had been waiting for arrived, the rest of the prisoners moved down the dusty street towards the train in a stumbling, weary column. The driver was only too eager to start and they moved off at dusk, rattling through the night, Slattery with Magdalena asleep against his shoulder, her face suddenly drawn with tiredness.
As they approached Tampico there was another hold-up. The officer in command at Tejeria had the train backed into a siding, but Atty saved the situation with a few bottles of beer. The next stop was for the gap where the rails had been torn up by the dynamiting and they all had to climb down and walk past the wreckage of the train. There were wails of protest.
‘Think they’ll shoot at us?’ Amaryllis asked cheerfully.
Stumbling along the torn-up track, they passed bodies lying among the foliage, but it was impossible to tell whether they were Federals or rebels. The heat was appalling and a woman collapsed and had to be carried in a blanket by four struggling men. Then, with the end of the ruined track in sight, shooting started again and Slattery, who was carrying a chi
ld, grabbed Magdalena’s arm and dragged her to the safe side of the raised roadbed where they crouched together among the huddle of frightened people, their arms round the screaming infant.
After a while the firing stopped and Tweedie began to wave his white flag. Nobody shot at it so they could only assume that the riflemen had been driven off and slowly, warily, they climbed to their feet and set off again, keeping to the sheltered side of the roadbed. Eventually they came to undamaged rails and finally, rounding a bend, saw a small engine with what looked like a coffee pot on the funnel waiting with a string of battered coaches. One after the other, the weary people began to hurry, finally breaking into a run, until they were nothing but a mob. A Federal officer waiting with a squad of soldiers jerked his hand at the carriages and they began to push the old and the young and the women aboard. Half an hour later, they were passing American-held positions, and a newsreel man standing on a flat car began taking pictures of them as they walked along the station platform.
Horrocks was there, too, waiting with Jesús. He had news of an impending attack and that the Ypiranga, the German arms ship, forbidden to enter Veracruz, had arrived in Puerto Mexico, further south, and was unloading there.
‘Seems a lot of people have been killed in Veracruz for nothing,’ he remarked dryly.
The tide was running strongly against Huerta now. Monterrey had fallen and Saltillo was on the point of capture. ‘If Huerta don’t go soon,’ Horrocks said, ‘there’ll be nowhere for him to go to. At the moment, the only place available’s Puerto Mexico. The German cruiser Dresden’s down there waitin’ for him to make up his mind.’
Despite their successes, however, the Constitutionalists were already falling out among themselves. In a fury at the lack of supplies Villa had resigned command of the Divisione del Norte and, eager to eliminate his most dangerous rival, Carranza had been quick to accept it, only to find that Villa had had second thoughts and, to show what he was capable of, had captured Zacatecas. But the break had come. Villa’s troops were immobilised for lack of coal and Carranza had directed all reinforcements and supplies to Obregón.