THE YOUNG SPANIARD

by MARY HOCKING

  After that everything happened too quickly for thought. There must have been at least four of them and they were experts. He was inside a bare room with a bright light in the centre and a long trestle table; they removed his clothes without any difficulty and there seemed to be no pause for breath between the time when he was alone in the courtyard and the moment when he was spread- eagled across the table. There was a man with a cane waiting there and he was an expert, too; the beating was administered with clinical precision. When it was finished, they dragged him into a toilet, then they sponged his face and dressed him. They took him by car to his hotel and got him up to his room without attracting attention. It was not difficult for them, the evening meal was served out of doors at the rear of the building and there was never anyone about in the front of the hotel at that time. When the door shut behind them the clock in the square was striking the quarter-hour. It had all happened in just over fifteen minutes.

  The thing that astonished James when he began to think coherently was his own reaction. As he lay retching and writhing on the bed, he was aware not so much of the, excruciating pain but of the indignity of the whole thing. They had beaten him. They had stripped off his clothes and beaten him. And it had not been like the torture scenes one read about in the more literary type of fiction in which there was a long duel between the torturer and his victim. No one had stood over him and asked him if he would play things their way; his reactions, strenuous though they were, had been of no interest. No one had even acknowledged his reality as an individual by saying: ‘This will help you to forget’. To these men he had been about as unimportant as a carcass in a butcher’s shop. He had never been so humiliated in his life.

  When Milo came an hour later he was not very sympathetic, although he had brought brandy.

  ‘I offered you a way out. What more did you want?’ He gave James the brandy and amused himself by tidying up the bed. He seemed, in fact, to find the whole episode vastly amusing and he enquired:

  ‘Well, what do you think of the Captain’s methods?’

  ‘If the idea was to stop me interfering, I can’t think of anything less likely to do it.’

  Milo nodded. He seemed rather pleased by this verdict.

  ‘He is not imaginative. He never studies the man he is dealing with.’ Milo poured himself out a glass of brandy and settled down in a chair. ‘It’s something in a man’s eyes. It tells you whether he will become more stubborn or less so under pressure. I could have told him those methods would not work with you.’

  ‘I’m very flattered,’ James said angrily, ‘both by your assessment of my character and by the Captain’s interest in me. But I should like to know just why he thought it worth his while to go to such lengths.’

  Milo wagged a finger.

  ‘Now that is something you would have done well to have asked yourself earlier. When a man in power is frightened, it is best not to aggravate him unless you know just why he is frightened. It is very rash to work on a man’s fear when you don’t know the cause of it—particularly if that man has the whip hand.’

  James moved impatiently and let out an involuntary groan. ‘For God’s sake get to the point—if there is one.’

  But Milo was not to be hurried.

  ‘The Captain has his problems, you really must be more sympathetic towards the poor man. Trennet is protected by a wealthy aristocrat who has done quite a lot for the Captain one way and another. And ever since Trennet came here, the Captain has been pretending to know nothing about him. Any day now the Spanish Government may make it necessary to drop this little pretence. That would be one thing. Our aristocratic friend would not himself wish to be placed in an embarrassing position with the Government. But it would be quite another matter if the whole thing were to blow up because the Captain was unable to control a bungling amateur like you. You would then have placed the Captain in a very awkward position. His source of income would dry up. Worse than that, his aristocratic friend might get spiteful and make trouble for him. He might suggest to those in power that the Captain was not a suitable person for his job.’

  James tried a tentative movement and groaned again.

  ‘We must have a long talk another time. Just now, I don’t think I want to listen to a dissertation on the Captain’s psychology.’

  ‘Psychology!’ Milo laughed. ‘That is your trouble. All science and book-learning. You have to study the man you are dealing with. A real flesh and blood man, not a case history between the covers of a dusty book. A man who . . .’ He leant forward and prodded James mercilessly in the pit of the stomach. When James had quietened down, he repeated: ‘A man who knows how to hurt you if you make a mistake with him.’

  The pain had made James feel sick again; it had also inflamed his anger.

  ‘Do you really approve of what happened to me this evening?’ he asked.

  For the first time Milo was thrown a little off-balance. He took refuge in sneering:

  ‘Approve! How prudish you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘If to be shocked that people are treated in that way is prudish, then I suppose I’m about the biggest prude you could find.’

  He rather spoilt the effect of this pronouncement by being sick again. When Milo had cleaned him up, he said rather irritably:

  ‘I don’t like this. No. It is so bloodless. And he does it for money that he doesn’t even know how to spend.’

  ‘Bloodless!’ It was good to have someone to attack for a change and James summoned his strength to make the most of his advantage. ‘I suppose you’re harking back to your own splendid career? I notice that when people want to extol the life of violence, to justify the clean, virile, life-reality of violence, it is usually the splendour of the mountains or the harsh brilliance of the desert that they choose for their background. It’s not quite so easy to make it sound convincing if you take Chicago or the Gorbals or the backrooms in your police station for their setting.’

  Milo was not much moved.

  ‘You talk very well. But you have never lived outside the shelter of civilization.’

  ‘Civilization seems to me too important ever to want to live outside it.’

  ‘Civilization!’ Milo shrugged his shoulders. ‘A mask to hide behind.’

  Looking at him James was aware that, however outrageous the remark, the contempt was genuine. And Milo, not being the man to be much moved by abstractions, must have a particular case in mind. James said:

  ‘We are back to Gaston Trennet, I imagine?’

  Milo got to his feet.

  ‘I brought you a few cuttings from old newspapers which I thought might interest you.’ He went to the door. At the door, he said: ‘My advice to you is to continue your journey to Seville. I believe that it is an aesthetically pleasing town . . .’ He brought the phrase out with a flourish and then spoilt the effect by saying: ‘I looked it up in a dictionary. It means an appreciation of the beautiful. You will find much to please you in Seville. And take your cousin with you—there are other pleasures there for her, no doubt. Take her friend, too. She will know how to enjoy it and she will be safer there.’

  When he had gone James lay quietly for a time. The pain in his body reminded him that it was too late for the aesthetic pleasures of Seville. After a while, to take his mind off his injuries, he picked up the newspaper cuttings and began to read them.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rose came back late from the office that evening to find Frangcon waiting outside her room. They were going out for a meal together and for once Frangcon was ready early. Rose made no mention of this rare occurrence. She seemed preoccupied as she opened the door of her room and walked across to the window to draw back the shutters. Frangcon was about to claim the congratulations which she felt to be her due when she saw Rose clearly in the light from the window.

  ‘Why, Rose, you don’t look very well.’

  There were weals under Rose’s eyes and the skin was drawn up into querulous puckers between her brows and at the sides of h
er mouth. She sat down heavily on the bed and kicked off her shoes. ‘I had an awful upheaval with James last night.’

  ‘With James?’

  Frangcon was a little comforted to learn that James had been at odds with Rose, too. He had behaved very hurtfully after the dance at Tossa de Mar, scarcely speaking to Frangcon on the way back to Barcelona.

  ‘And the office has been murder all day,’ Rose went on. ‘A party of Germans missed their train and some bloody bitch of a woman had hysterics because she had been given a bedroom without a window.’ She looked up, wincing as she moved her head. ‘You haven’t seen James today, I suppose?’

  ‘I saw him briefly this afternoon; we came out of our hotels at the same time. But he was on his way to see Milo and barely seemed to notice me.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  It was almost a scream. But Frangcon was brooding over James’s neglect of her and did not respond. Rose said loudly:

  ‘James has decided that I’m going to prison and he’s trying to put things right.’

  Frangcon stared at her.

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  It took a long time for Frangcon to absorb things; Rose could have wished for a quicker-witted companion. She searched around in her mind for a way of convincing Frangcon that would avoid long and tedious explanations. She recalled:

  ‘You found a passport in my room—it had slipped down behind the couch—remember?’

  Frangcon said nothing, but she paused in the act of lighting a cigarette. It was always a sign that one had struck some chord in Frangcon when she could be distracted from her intentions even to this extent. Rose went on quickly:

  ‘The name was Gaston Trennet. You said the face reminded you of Raoul. Well, it was Raoul.’

  Frangcon lit the cigarette and drew on it. After a moment, she said:

  ‘How could it be if it was Gaston Trennet?’

  Rose told her.

  ‘And now James has found out—God knows how. He was incredibly intense about it and he made it sound so serious in that hectoring way of his. “Do you realize . . .” and “Surely you appreciate . . .” and “Have you thought of the likely developments . . .’

  ‘But Rose, what have you done? I can’t take this in.’

  ‘Oh well, for one thing, his old passport is out of date and I got that fixed for him, just in case he ever needed it. That’s why it was in my room. Then I got him another passport in his present name and one or two other documents.’

  ‘But however do you manage these things?’ Frangcon was admiring. ‘You sound so efficient, Rose, just like a secret agent.’

  ‘This sort of thing happens from time to time. No one makes a lot of it here. And I knew a Spanish boy in one of their travel agencies who used to brag about the things he could fix for people. We never took him very seriously, he was always making outrageous statements—the type that has to build himself up all the time, you know. Then I went to a party with a fellow called Manuel and he introduced me to Raoul. He said that Raoul wanted a bit of help and I had had rather a lot to drink and I said I knew someone who could fix things. It turned out Juan hadn’t been bragging about that. That’s the trouble with the Spanish, you never can tell when they are leading you on and when they are telling the truth. Manuel got Raoul and me together again; then he disappeared in a hurry and Raoul and I . . . Well, you know the rest.’

  ‘But what has Raoul done?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ James had said, ‘say you don’t know what he has done or where he has come from; say that all the time to anyone you have to speak to about it.’ That piece of advice, at least, had stuck in her mind. It was very nearly the truth, anyway; Raoul had merely told her that he had ‘got into trouble because of his political opinions’ and this rather passive description of his activities had satisfied her. It was a phrase that one heard often enough. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘I just knew he was in trouble.’

  Frangcon sat with her head bowed for a moment studying the glowing rip of her cigarette; when she looked up her dark eyes shone as she said quietly:

  ‘I think that was wonderful of you. Rose.’

  ‘What?’ Rose, who had no wish at this moment to be the centre of a drama, was disconcerted by the tribute.

  ‘I think it was wonderful of you.’

  ‘Oh, heavens, Frangcon, it wasn’t all that wonderful! I didn’t risk anything much—that’s what I kept telling James.’

  But Frangcon, as usual, was pursuing her own thoughts.

  ‘I shouldn’t have known what to do. I should have fumbled around, meaning well, asking a lot of questions, trying to understand, but not doing anything.’

  ‘I didn’t do all that much,’ Rose protested in a high voice.

  ‘You gave him what he needed. Rose.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Rose gave a shaky laugh. ‘People get used to this sort of thing living near a frontier. They don’t make a great drama of it.’

  She had a friend, Vashti, who worked in West Berlin. Vashti was always talking in an amusing, nonchalant way about the intrigues there. Rose had thought this a very sophisticated attitude. She had enjoyed emulating her, although as far as she knew Vashti had never been personally involved in anything. Until now Rose had been rather proud of having gone one better than Vashti. The trouble was that she no longer fell so nonchalant about the episode; that was the trouble with people like Frangcon and James, they made such heavy weather of everything. She wished she had not told Frangcon.

  The evening was not a success. Frangcon tried to reopen the subject once or twice but Rose would not co-operate. Finally, she said snappishly:

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. You’re just as bad as James. In fact, you’re awfully alike in some things. You both take life so seriously.’

  ‘I could think of worse people to be like.’

  The reply was very quick for Frangcon. Rose, anxious to change the subject, began to tease her but Frangcon did not respond. She was rather quiet for the remainder of the evening and Rose suspected that this was because she was mulling events over in her mind. Rose was not at all sure that it was not rather dangerous to have driven Frangcon’s curiosity underground. What a tiresome person she was! It took her so long to get into a situation and then when you were bored with it you found that she was entrenched firmly enough to withstand a siege. Rose had had past experience of Frangcon’s tenacity. There had been the woman at Frangcon’s school who was unbalanced; Frangcon had spent a whole summer trailing around with her, trying to inject reason into a tight little world in which the reasoning mechanism had broken down. She had even sacrificed her own holiday plans and had spent a hair- raising couple of weeks in Cornwall dragging the woman back from rocks and deep water. Her family and friends had been heartily relieved when the woman had been removed to a nursing home, not noticeably the better for Frangcon’s ministrations. Rose hoped that Frangcon was not going to repeat that performance now with Raoul as the victim.

  ‘Don’t you get involved with Raoul, will you?’ she pleaded when they parted.

  She sounded so perturbed that Frangcon took refuge in evasion. Being rather piqued by James’s behaviour she had agreed to spend the following day with Raoul who was off duty. Rose had appeared to be losing interest in him and there had seemed to be no harm in seeing him. But now she wondered whether Rose might be a little jealous, so she said:

  ‘I won’t get involved with him, I promise you.’

  By which she meant that he would not become her lover. Rose, who had not been thinking along these lines, was satisfied with this assurance.

  It seemed that there was not much danger, one way or the other, of involvement with Raoul. He was at his most remote when he and Frangcon took the train to Sitges the next day.

  ‘It’s going to rain later,’ he said. ‘But I shouldn’t think it will come until the evening.’

  He went on talking about the weather. Frangcon, who was eager to know more about him, was disappointed. They
had coffee at Sitges and watched the fashionable strolling by, impeccably if bizarrely attired. The big, flashy cars nosed through the narrow streets driven by bronzed men in dark glasses with hard faces and impatient mouths. The waiters in the hotel where they had a late lunch were arrogant and bored. It was more sleek and accomplished than Tossa de Mar; the dirt and poverty had been eliminated and anyone wandering the streets with the brightly painted buildings bedecked with brilliant flowers would have had a very glossy impression of Spain. Raoul fell easily into the mood of the place, making aimless, blasé comments on people and surroundings. Frangcon, who did not enjoy this kind of thing, found herself longing for James. She had conquered pride and had gone across to his hotel in the morning only to be told by the proprietor that he was still in bed. The man had winked at her as he said, ‘I think he had a rough night.’

  ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ Raoul offered.

  ‘They’re not important.’

  When they went down to the beach they found it so crowded that they decided to walk farther along the coast. They came eventually to a narrow, rock-strewn bay with only a few patches of rather coarse sand. It had the forlorn look of a place that is always passed by, but at least it was empty. They swam for a while and then found a patch of sand sheltered by boulders from the strong sea breeze where they could dry themselves in the sun. Raoul watched the big bank of cloud building up towards the north. Frangcon fidgeted around, trying to find a place where the sun would burn her legs which were still rather pale. When she had settled down, she said:

  ‘Why don’t you go back to teaching, Raoul?’

  ‘Because I can’t. Do you like this place, Frangcon? English people always have a passion for tiny coves. Personally I prefer a wide expanse of sand, provided it isn’t littered with reclining forms.’

  ‘Why can’t you go back? I’m a teacher; if I left—to have a baby for example—I could go back afterwards.’

  A month ago he would have tried to divert the conversation, recognizing the danger point. Now he let it take its course with a feeling of relief, as though a pressure on his mind was about to be eased. He laughed and put his arms behind his head.