Back to Battle

by Max Hennessy

  Wearing khaki trousers and a bush jacket he’d bought in South Africa three years before with no sign of his rank or profession, he set off for the Presidencia. There were several soldiers on guard, but none of them stopped him chiefly, he suspected, because they couldn’t think of any grounds to do so.

  Then he saw Teresa Axuriaguerrera. She was standing near the entrance talking to one of the soldiers. She was wearing a red shirt and blue cotton trousers, the uniform of so many of the Republican men and women, and his heart gave an unexpected knock against his chest because she didn’t seem to have altered much, with the same dark hair and blue eyes that had always reminded him of Charley Upfold, and a dignity that came from the upright carriage that every young Spaniard, male or female, seemed to possess.

  It seemed stiflingly hot and there was a smell of dust in the air, and he noticed that the flowers by the gate were coated with a thick white powder. Above him, the sky was a scalding blue, shining with a brilliance that was reflected from the white walls in a way that hurt the eyes, and there were a lot of kites about, which he’d been told had been attracted by the bodies in the fields outside the city.

  Lighting a cigarette to show a self-confidence he didn’t feel, he began to march forward. One of the soldiers stepped in front of him immediately, holding his rifle breast-high.

  ‘Quiére algo?’

  The girl looked round and addressed a few words to the soldier. He laughed and she turned to Kelly, no sign of recognition on her face so that he was on his guard at once against a trick. Did they suspect him for some reason? Was she being used to trap him? Had she so changed her spots with the civil war she was no longer to be trusted?

  ‘You are not a Basque?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘No. English.’

  ‘From one of the British destroyers?’

  ‘Yes. I’m looking for someone.’

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘You won’t find her here,’ she smiled.

  She spoke again to the soldier, who grinned and waved them away, then, putting her arm through Kelly’s, she guided him up the shabby street towards the centre of the town.

  ‘Quiére usted beber?’

  Kelly nodded. ‘Yes, I’d like a drink.’

  They found a bar and sat outside under a dusty umbrella. She lifted her glass to toast him.

  ‘Tengo el gusto de beber a la salud de Ustedes. Quiére usted verme?’ Then, dropping her voice, she spoke again in English. ‘I am so pleased to see you again, George Kelly.’

  There was no mistaking the warmth in her voice and he placed his hand over hers. ‘Why did you disappear, Teresa?’

  She gave him an anguished look. ‘My country was suffering. To the Basques there is such a thing as honour.’

  ‘To the British,’ Kelly said, ‘there’s such a thing as love. I was on the point of asking you to marry me.’

  ‘Oh, no! ‘Her face fell. ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Why not? I thought it was what you wanted, too.’ He frowned, remembering an old hurt that was connected with Charley Upfold. ‘Somebody once said that as a sailor I was terrific but as a hearts and flowers type I was a dead loss.’

  ‘Dead loss?’

  ‘Fiasco. Falla. Fracaso.’ He tried to explain. ‘I’m a slow starter.’ She looked at him with suddenly shining eyes and he found the magic worked again just as it had the previous year. Being with her was like looking through a magnifying glass that made everything sharp and clear and colourful. He was bewitched at once. The only other woman who’d ever had the same effect on him had been Charley Upfold and he determined not to let her get away again.

  ‘I asked for you,’ she said quietly. ‘But not because of that. I didn’t even know.’ Her fingers tightened in his. ‘I couldn’t have known. You never showed what you felt.’

  Kelly frowned. ‘Englishmen don’t go in for singing serenades with guitars under balconies!’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘I always loved you when you were stiff and British, George Kelly. I heard what you did at Bilbao and asked for you because I knew I could trust you.’

  ‘You couldn’t in a dark corner,’ he said, and she laughed.

  The streets were full of marching men carrying rifles and flags, the red, yellow and purple Republican colours contrasting with the black streamers they added for the dead. They wore overalls and berets, forage caps and steel helmets, with clattering rifles, pans and aluminium cups hung about them. A few of them had their girl friends with them at their head, scarlet-lipped and trousered, because the Anarchists liked to shock the pious Basques. They were carrying their wounded because it was said that most of the hurt in this war died from the jolting of the ambulances on the appalling Spanish roads, and Kelly noticed that though no one was supposed to believe in the church any more, bells were still tolling for the dead.

  Many of the buildings had been wrecked by bombs and were still smoking, and on the walls were slogans – ‘Arriba España,’ ‘Viva La libertad’ and the more earthy’ Vino y aceite.’

  ‘The bombers came last night,’ Teresa said. ‘The German volunteers. The troops outside the city are Italians. Why doesn’t the British government send soldiers to help us?’

  Probably because they’re a gutless lot, Kelly thought. Or probably because, with half the country in favour of the Republicans and the other half – that half which got its faces in the society magazines – undoubtedly supporting Franco, it was hard to know who to favour.

  The priest, who was wearing civilian clothes, had a flat near the cathedral, which consisted of a living-bedroom and a kitchen. He was an old man, shabby and with a shaking voice, but his resolve was firm.

  ‘The sisters are all in hiding,’ he announced at once. ‘Have you found a ship to transport them?’

  ‘She’s in the bay. I still have to find the means of getting them on board.’

  It was decided that the old man should warn the nuns to be ready while Kelly sought means to get a message to Badger. As they parted, Teresa took his hand to touch his fingers with her lips.

  He managed to find a small ship which had been Greek until a few weeks before but had now started flying the Union Jack and called herself – somewhat hastily, Kelly guessed, so there’d been no time to forage in a dictionary of names – Jimmy. Even that was spelt uncertainly on her stern as JIMY.

  Her captain was obese and moist with anxiety, but he agreed to help and had one of the ship’s motor boats lowered into the water to carry messages to Badger. Because he was due to leave in three days time, he agreed to carry any evacuees Kelly wished to lift off, but he was in constant need of reassurance that the British warships would protect him when he left. On board already were five hundred badly wounded Basque soldiers due to go to Santoña further along the coast. They were dragging their way along the decks to get soup, candles, matches or cigarettes in the light of flickering oil lamps. In the shadows, the bandages they wore made them seem as if they’d been in a snowstorm.

  Returning to the priest’s flat, Kelly found Teresa there with the old man. All the messages had been delivered and the nuns would start appearing the following day. There was still the question of the dozen or so British nationals remaining in Santander, however, and they borrowed an old French Citroën which they used to drive to the British Club near the museum. It had been wrecked by a bomb and then by looters and there was only one British woman there.

  ‘Jenner-Neate,’ she introduced herself briskly. ‘Of the Child Relief Fund.’

  She would have been recognisable as British at once from her sensible skirt and shoes and the pearls she wore round her neck. But she also had a sensible straight back and a splendid figure and she’d already performed wonders getting Spanish children to safety along the Basque coast.

  ‘The people who’re left are such a silly lot,’ she said angrily. ‘There’s an elderly major and his wife, and Mrs. Fotheringay–’

  ‘She sounds formidable,’ Kelly grinned.

  ‘She has a dog and she won�
�t leave without it. There are nine altogether, with two Spanish, one Frenchwoman and one Albanian.’

  As they left, Teresa was wearing a troubled frown and he knew there was something on her mind. Pulling her into a café for a drink, he made her tell him what it was.

  ‘Will you accept one more?’ she asked. ‘For me?’

  ‘No political figures. We’re supposed to be neutral.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘I doubt if there’s a politician in Spain of either side worth helping. It’s my old professor. He was always inclined to air his opinions and he’s been talking too much. He’s had to hide from Chief of Police Neila.’

  By the time Kelly returned to the city centre, shells were dropping in the streets, and police vans, Red Cross ambulances and journalists’ cars were moving in the murk of dust they raised. The city swarmed with movement and seemed bowed under the noise of the sirens of the trawlers, which had been brought into the harbour to pick up the refugees. It was impossible to separate individuals, and he could only count hundreds of excited heads as women, children and old men piled uncontrollably aboard. The streets were stacked high with chairs, bedsteads and sagging bundles, and the sound was of marching men, the roar of motors, and the cries of awakened children.

  Troops were coming in from the front as Kelly reached the hotel, and the look on their faces showed what they thought of their chances. There was no longer any line, they said and they were retiring without a struggle, bombed mercilessly by the Germans and Italians whenever the mist lifted, so that they’d had to leave their wounded to die in the highlands behind them. A division of the Basque Army corps had resisted immovably for thirty-six hours, but the Santanderinos, who were not made of the same stuff, had left them to it and gone home in a steady stream across the coverless hills, until finally the Basques had also had more than they could take and were on their way in, too.

  By evening, most of the nuns, all dressed in ordinary clothes had appeared in twos and threes and been ferried in Jimmy’s motor boat out to Badger. There had been no sign from Teresa and there was still the problem of the two hostage Republican generals. Kelly had been unable to find anyone in authority who was interested in them and, in desperation, he tried the sentries on the quay.

  ‘Who’s your superior officer?’ he asked.

  The man grinned. ‘Anybody with a bigger gun than I have,’ he said.

  In the end they brought the two men from Badger and turned them loose on the quay. It seemed a bit like pushing them out of the frying pan into the fire because it was clearly not going to be long before Santander fell, and the Nationalists weren’t noted for showing much mercy.

  Back aboard Badger, a sherry party for the nuns was being thrown in the wardroom and they appeared to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

  ‘Ought to try ‘em on gin, sir,’ Smart suggested. ‘They’d probably be quite lively.’

  ‘I’m going back for the British contingent now,’ Kelly said. ‘If there’s bombing, don’t wait. Jimmy’ll bring ’em out.’

  There had still been no message from Teresa and he was growing worried, but he knew that if he went to the Presidencia again it could cause trouble for her.

  The following day the weather was like summer in England and nobody seemed to have accepted that the place was dying. The offensive had started three days before and the Nationalists were already half-way to the city, but, though the government had ordered the shutting down of all industries so that workers could help construct fortifications, organisation seemed to have fallen apart and most people seemed merely to be enjoying the time off while the army squabbled among itself, first the Santanderinos refusing to fight, then the Bilbainos who had arrived to help them.

  At the British Club, Miss Jenner-Neate was worried. She’d been unable to contact several of the British residents who’d gone into hiding in safer parts of the city.

  ‘They’re all a bit stupid,’ she said. ‘They think because they’re British they’re untouchable.’

  ‘Tell them the destroyer, Hunter, was mined only a fortnight ago,’ Kelly suggested. ‘That might convince them that the might of the British Empire doesn’t necessarily reach out to them here.’

  He took several addresses and set off to unearth them. The day was exhausting in the heat, because the British residents were not anxious to move and many of them were elderly people who’d spent their savings buying what they thought could be a safe retreat from English winters. Bullying, cajoling and extracting promises, in the end he had them all agreeing not to let him down, and he returned to the Hotel Jauregui hoping against hope he’d hear something from Teresa.

  The tap water was still not running so he found a large bucket and went to the ornamental lake to get enough to wash, carrying it back with the spatulate leaves from the trees floating on the surface to stop it slopping over. When he poured it into the wash basin, fifty per cent of it had solidified as mud on the bottom.

  There was a constant drone of aeroplanes overhead and scarlet flashes in the sky at the other side of the city. It looked as if everyone was out in the streets but the heart seemed to have gone out of them. Christ, he thought uneasily, he’d been in more dying towns and cities in his life than he cared to remember.

  The planes came again after dark, German Junkers and Heinkels and Italian Savoias and Fiats, and as the bombs dropped he could hear the wails of terror outside. The hotel seemed to have emptied of staff but the ground floor was full of terrified people. He took one look at it, pushed his way to the bar, bought a bottle of brandy and headed back to his room. If he were going to die, he thought, he might as well die with a bit of elbowroom to do it in, not trampled to death by a panic-stricken mob.

  The artillery fire sounded closer now and he heard there had been a last infantry attack, which had left a mountain of corpses on the rocky slopes outside the city. Going downstairs again, he questioned a group of Basques.

  There was something about the Basques that appealed to him. They were a religious, deep drinking lot who all seemed to be good sailors and detested regimentation. To the Spanish they were ‘brutos’ and ‘bestias’, but to them the Spanish were intriguers and political parasites who lived off other people’s industry, and their whole history had been one of trying to obtain autonomy for themselves. By this time, they’d lost every foot of their country and were simply hoping now to reach the wild Asturias to fight a hopeless rearguard action.

  They were all well-armed with rifles, while revolvers, those most dramatic and useless of weapons, dangled from all ranks, to say nothing of grenades which swung in bunches from their waists like the bananas that Josephine Baker had used in her nude shows. They were exhausted but far from dispirited.

  ‘Hay una vida mas barata,’ one of them said to Kelly, ‘que no vale La pena de vivir. There’s a cheaper life but it’s not worth living.’

  It seemed a better attitude than that of the British government as it crawled at the feet of the dictators.

  During the night the bombing seemed to stop. Expecting Teresa’s professor at any moment, Kelly decided to leave the bed for him and merely lay on top of it, a glass of brandy by his elbow. He had just dropped off when the door rattled and he was off the bed in an instant. As he unlocked it, it flew open in his face and Teresa flung herself at him. All the mischief, all the taunting had gone from her face and her cheeks were covered with tears.

  ‘What’s happened? Where is he?’

  ‘Neila took him,’ she sobbed. ‘Neila took him last night. They took him to the Cabo Mayor wireless station near the Miramar Palace. They shot him and threw his body into the sea.’

  Her fingers clutched his, tense and hard, and she began to cry in soft muted whimperings. Holding her tight, trying to comfort her, harrowed by her tears, all he was able to do was say ‘Please don’t cry’ and stroke her hair. Then, with her crouched against him, his lips in her hair, they slipped down against the pillows, clutching each other. Lifting her head, he laid his lips on hers and suddenly
he found they were exchanging racking kisses that left their mouths numb. At last she seemed to relax and he saw she was staring at him with a strange, wondering look. For a second, they remained like that, their faces only an inch apart, then his hand slipped under her shirt above the trousers she wore, and he felt the warm skin in the hollow of her back and the sudden quivering tension of her body.

  She shuddered in a spasm of pain and there were new tears on his cheek, then she was moaning softly against him, her face hidden in the curve of his neck, her fingers digging into his muscles, and he reached up and pulled the sheet over them.

  When they woke the following morning, Kelly could hear the thudding of shells in the distance and somewhere not far away the tap-tapping of a machine gun. It sounded slow and old, as though it were a relic from the Great War. Then he became aware of Teresa’s head against his shoulder. He felt faintly guilty, feverish and absurd, but, as he turned to look at her, he saw her eyes were open, large and wondering and blue. As his lips touched hers, her arms went swiftly round his neck.

  ‘Marry me, Teresa,’ he said.

  ‘We are already married, George Kelly,’ she said. ‘As married as we’ll ever be. More married than my professor will ever be now.’

  He tried to extract a promise but she remained wary and noncommittal as if she had no confidence in the future.

  ‘I wonder if it’s all been worthwhile,’ she said, as though she doubted even her own beliefs. ‘I wonder how much difference it will make when the war’s over who won. Who’ll be any better off in all the poverty and debt? People don’t meet these days as they should, and falling in love is like being on a bicycle back-pedalling. You put in a lot of hard work and get nowhere. Love includes having a future, too.’