Not Just a Soldier’s War

by Not Just a Soldier's War (retail) (epub)

  ‘You think that they won’t bomb us because there are mostly women and children in this trap? It hasn’t stopped them in the past.’ There was a fierce bitterness in her quiet voice.

  Dimitri said nothing, but wrapped his big coat closer around the dozing Eugenia who was flopped against him.

  Eve became aware of his hand, warm over her own, then of the strangeness of their situation: a soldier of the Soviet army – perhaps even an intelligence officer – disguised as a peasant, comforting a tormented Spanish girl, and an English woman truck-driver cradling a malnourished Spanish baby who had never had the strength to toddle a single step. She leant across the children and kissed him gently. ‘I love you very much, Josep.’

  As night wore on, rumour and speculation heightened the tension but the attack never came. Eve thought that a more likely explanation than Dimitri’s was the rumour that the convoy of several large vans that had gone through the border post during the night were carrying paintings by Velazquez, El Greco and Goya en route to the Duke of Alba in London. Who knew such things? How did these rumours start? And yet, someone, somewhere, knew how to drive past the guards with scarcely a check.

  There was also speculation that when they reached the border they would all be put on trains and sent back to work as slaves under the new regime; that the men and women were being separated on the French side, the men going to Argelès, and the women God knows where. Everyone hoped that they would be taken to Mexico – the haven most of them wanted to reach. In Mexico they would be welcomed. All these pretty Spanish girls, Eve thought, will be welcome anywhere. There were women who swore that they would rather go on the streets than return to Spain.

  Only the children slept that night as Dimitri put forward his plan of how they would get through if they did not have permits that suited the guards. His own was quite authentic: Josep Alier was a half-Slav Spanish labourer. His fingernails were easily broken by delving into the rain-sodden rocky earth and his well-cared-for skin was soon rough and chapped enough to match his face.

  The next day they reached the border. Although there was a great crush of people desperate to get through before it closed again, the guards still made an attempt to inspect every document thrust at them. Eve was so apprehensive that she trembled until Eugenia took her hand and squeezed it.

  With no proper food and exposure to the wet and cold, the journey had set little Posa back weeks. She hung about Dimitri’s neck in a state of sick torpor.

  They had arranged that Eve should hold back and not make any sign that they were together until he had spoken to a guard. What they had not arranged was that he should take Posa with him. Eve and Eugenia stood together and watched stiffly and silently from a distance. At first the guard waved Dimitri away, but Dimitri persisted, pointing over his shoulder at Posa. People around were becoming agitated until the guard took Dimitri into the guardhouse. What if he never reappeared? Eve felt the bile of hunger rise, burning her throat. What if they were separated? Eugenia would never stand another emotional shock, and Posa was so delicate that there were times when Eve felt that her frail life still hung in the balance. Without the children life would be unendurable. Without Dimitri?

  She didn’t know. Until his sudden reappearance in the exodus from Catalonia, she had told herself that a line had been drawn under that affair, as it had been drawn under Ozz, Alex, Haskell and the scores of others whose light had burned so brightly in her life for a short while and then gone out. The chances of ever knowing what had happened to Alex and Haskell were slim.

  But suddenly there was the possibility that hers and Dimitri’s story might have a different ending. What had prompted him to put everything at risk and come with her and the children? The three of them would have managed somehow, but his presence made all the difference. In the great thronging mass, the four of them had taken on an identity. People travelling alongside them supposed that they were a family. At this moment that was all she wanted in the world, to be a family with the girls and Dimitri.

  The waiting seemed endless. Suddenly Dimitri reappeared, cradling Posa in his arms. It was apparent from his positive stride and the set of his jaw that he might have succeeded. Eve and Eugenia breathed sighs of relief and squeezed hands, then went forward to meet him.

  ‘Is OK. I have paid three gold rings and one good wristwatch for our sick child to be taken through to Friends.’

  Dimitri had apparently been referring to Quaker Friends, for as soon as they were on the French side of the border, almost collapsing with relief, she saw a familiar face.

  ‘Sweet! Sweet Moffat.’

  ‘I say, if it isn’t…’

  ‘Yes,’ Eve quickly put in. ‘Señora Alier. This is my husband Josep and our children, Eugenia and Posa.’

  ‘My, my, if young Eugenia here don’t make me think how well you’ve kept your looks.’

  Eve smiled wryly, but felt so old at twenty-one that she was sure that she could easily pass as the mother of a twelve-year-old.

  ‘Here, give me that wee thing. We have very little here, but at least the children can have a drink of warm milk and a bite of bread.’

  Although their escape was now secure, they were still made to jump through bureaucratic hoops before they could get a train across France. Where, at the border, Dimitri had worked the miracle, in Paris it was Eve who was able to take over. The O’Dells accepted it as an everyday occurrence that a young woman who had left them nearly two years ago carrying a vanload of clothing, should return with two solemn children and a husband who spoke bad English with a Russian accent, and perfect Catalan.

  Eve was as proud of them as though they had been her family. For two weeks, while arrangements were being made for all four of them to obtain the documents they needed to enter England, the children were fed and petted and taken shopping for clothes. Dimitri, although he accepted some better clothes than the rain-shrunken dank ones he had travelled in, decided to keep the beard.

  Fran O’Dell took Eve to a beauty salon and then to buy some feminine clothes. Eve felt apprehensive and out of her depth to be suddenly in the midst of such luxury. It was time to consider the future. ‘Fran. I can’t go back home.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘You can?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It seems such an awful thing not to want to go back to where you belong.’

  ‘Come here, sit down.’ Although it was still hardly spring, the tables were out on the pavements. Fran ordered cafe-au-lait and they lit cigarettes. ‘So, where is this place? The one where you belong.’

  Eve stirred sugar into her coffee before she answered. ‘I don’t know. I don’t feel that I belong anywhere at the moment. Not with my relations. You said you understand.’

  ‘I was born as English as you, my dear, yet I am a Parisienne, and I shall always be. This is where I belong. If France goes to war with Germany, then I stay with France. One’s place in the world does not have to be where one’s mother happened to give birth.’

  Eve, smiling, reached across the chipped enamel table and clutched the other woman’s hand. ‘You don’t know what a relief it is to hear that, Fran.’

  ‘But I do. Frankie had to tell me much the same thing. Before that I felt all sorts of a traitor loving France more than England. But I do. I should die if I had to go back there. I hardly ever do.’

  ‘My family will be hurt.’

  ‘Perhaps. But you may be surprised how easily the place you left has been filled. They would have to fill it. How else can any family keep going when one member is removed? Families survive deaths. Your family will survive your defection – I expect that they already have.’ She was probably right, but she and Ray had hardly survived Kenny’s empty place and she did not like to accept that they could do without her. Yet if she returned, she would be smothered. It would be like slowly drowning in warm honey. Would Dimitri survive? Had Ray? It was tempting to crawl back to the place where there were magic groves and strawberry fields, to unques
tioning love and allowances made for all things.

  But she had seen such pain and misery, hunger and fear in children that no one should ever see. She needed to go where she could try to come to terms with such overwhelming evil. She needed to digest her anger and bitterness and put it to some use. Above all she was responsible for two children who were victims of the war that they had never had any say in. They needed to be cared for by people who had experience of how they had come to be injured mentally and physically.

  ‘Do we have time to do some more shopping?’

  ‘In Paris there is always time for that, and it is good for the children if you are not always hovering over them.’

  ‘Do I hover?’

  ‘I’m afraid you do. You’d be surprised how well they manage when you’re away – if it is not too long. Posa is everybody’s sweetheart, but Eugenia is only yours – and Josep’s.’

  Eve nodded. ‘She is. Dimitri is so patient with her.’

  ‘He has such a nice nature. Shall you marry him?’

  ‘Now that I’ve decided that I shan’t go back to England, probably not. In any case, why make changes to something that works perfecdy? Come on, Fran, drink up your coffee, I want to find a bank. I should have royalties from my writing piled up and I want to spend some. Where can we find summer clothes at this time of year?’

  Fran laughed. ‘Now that April is around the corner, in almost every boutique and shop in Paris. Am I to take it that you have decided not to be the prodigal daughter returned?’

  ‘For now, yes. If Dimitri agrees. Hell, even if he doesn’t agree I’m going to take the children to visit the Lavenders.’

  * * *

  They stopped off in Cape Town. The days spent there were like a stay in Paradise. Dimitri and Eugenia held hands with Eve, while Dimitri carried Posa to the unconcealed amusement, or disapproval, of black nannies. They spent hours window-gazing and entering street cafes just for the joy of asking for the food they fancied and finding it brought to them. Seeing the way the Europeans used the blacks made Eve think of Enro Peters and the future he now saw for himself working for the freedom for his own people. An active Christian, he had written to Eve: ‘I shall work for my own people now, not with guns and fire, but with the vote.’ But, she had thought, wasn’t that where it had all started in Spain? A democratic revolution. Spaniards had voted for their freedom; yet it had turned into a tragedy so immense that it looked as though there might be no end in sight.

  On midsummer day, as they were putting the children to bed in the hotel, she said, ‘This is my birthday.’

  ‘How old?’ Eugenia asked.

  ‘As old as my hair and a bit older than my teeth.’

  Eugenia grinned. ‘So, how old is your teeth?’

  Eve gave the girl a hug. There were times when she saw a glimpse of her own girlish self in Eugenia and promised herself that she would do her damnedest to see that the worst of Eugenia’s life was now in the past. ‘You, girl, are catching the Russian bastard’s sense of humour. My teeth is about eighteen.’

  Out of the blue, Posa said, ‘Posa-Posa-Posa’, which left them speechless. It was a moment of great triumph. Dimitri said, ‘Say again. Posa.’ Once started there seemed to be no stopping her. The sudden appearance of something normal in the little girl was astonishing to them.

  Looking out over Table Mountain later, Eve began to get cold feet. ‘Supposing it’s all a great disaster, Dimitri?’

  ‘It will not be.’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s the Lavenders. It’s all very well saying this and that in a letter, but are there really people who will give a home to people they know nothing about?’

  ‘Is it only Eve who has compassion for lost people, for poor children?’

  ‘But this is different.’

  ‘Is not. These people are good. They need to help, because of Ozz who died.’

  ‘Will they really be able to take to Spanish children?’

  ‘This son dies for, what you say?, for beautiful ideal of freedom?’

  ‘For the splendid ideal.’

  ‘Yes. Is splendid, I think too. If the children have food and love in new country, is not enough if there is not freedom. In my country I have plenty food always, warm things; in army I have good friendships. But no freedoms to say. Think, but not say. Even to think is now dangerous.’

  She looked at him closely. It was almost like seeing him for the first time – not the exuberant lover, not the generous soldier who liked a good time, not the children’s protector, she was seeing a good man, an admirable man even.

  Had she really met this good man so casually? At what point had they each made a choice that would lead them here? Had there been a choice, or was it simply serendipity? Chance? If not that, then Fate? She had met David as casually, and he had been the subject of her thoughts and dreams for a long time, yet what she felt for Dimitri was not at all the same. If Dimitri disappeared from her life it would matter very much.

  ‘Dimitri? Listen. When you said that you loved me…’

  ‘Is true!’

  ‘I know. I—’ She hesitated to say the words. She still wasn’t sure that she could handle such commitment. ‘I’m glad.’

  He looked straight into her eyes, not allowing her to be evasive. ‘Tell me how.’

  Why was it so difficult?

  It was difficult because in telling him that she loved him, she felt a kind of failure. Until that day when he had joined the exodus from Spain, until he had picked up Posa and given Eugenia the protection of his arm as she slept in the rain, until he had put himself in danger of being exposed at the frontier checkpoint, she had been the independent new woman she had set out to make of herself. She had done it, thrown off the conventions of her class and escaped. She had vowed never to become like her mother and her grandmother.

  ‘I’m glad because, because I have fallen in love with you, Dimitri.’

  ‘Is wonderful, Eve. Say to me, “I love you, Dimitri”. Is this possible to say?’

  It was possible. She went across to where he was sitting on the hotel veranda under the clear bright stars of the Cape Town night. She put her arms round his neck. ‘I love you, Dimitri. Truly, I do love you. I love you very much, Dimitri.’

  Epilogue

  Jess Lavender had said that she would bring a lilac-coloured scarf so that Eve could pick her out. Eve, aware of the scrawniness of the children, was tense with apprehension that these people might not take to them. Dimitri lifted Eugenia on to his back, and Eve sat Posa in the crook of her arm. ‘Can you see her? Look for an old lady with purple scarf.’

  ‘She is old?’

  Eugenia said, ‘Old as her eyes.’

  Dimitri said, ‘Is clever, Genia.’ He turned his happy brilliant smile on her and gave her a kiss. ‘Is good to make jokes.’

  It would be all right. Whatever happened with the Lavenders, it would all be all right. Eve and Dimitri and the two children were as complete a family as any other. More complete than her own had been. But she wanted the Lavenders to like the children, so that there would be time to give Eugenia back her mental health, and to allow Posa to develop physically in peaceful surroundings with plenty of food.

  And, if only for Ozz’s sake and for the loss of him she still feels, she wants to give the Lavenders something. He had said that she was the sort of girl they would have wanted him to take home to Sunday tea. The picture of Jess Lavender that Eve has held in her mind was not from a photograph, but drawn by Ozz in loving and funny sketches. Eve looks for a fierce little Welsh lady who smiled and laughed, and was soft as butter inside.

  Suddenly Eve, waving a lavender-coloured scarf, sees the large lilac square as big as a pillow-case being waved. Her heart leaps. A tall, sinewy, handsome woman with golden hair that is beginning to fade from the colour that had been Ozz’s. There is no mistaking Ozz’s mam.

  ‘Look, look! That’s her! She’s seen us… Eugenia, wave. Dimitri, it’s her… It’s Ozz’s mother. I mustn’t cry, Dimitri…
just don’t let me cry.’

  He gives her a peck on the cheek. ‘Is OK to cry, maybe Dimitri cry… Is very moving. Future is hopeful, Eve. Is good we come to Australia with children and make more.’

  She almost can’t bring herself to tempt fate and be happy. Too many times in the past she has been slapped down for thinking that she could be happy. Yet this moment is marvellous. ‘We couldn’t have made it without you, Dimitri.’

  ‘Ach, you modest. You would have make it OK.’ He gives her a friendly squeeze. ‘I come because I know I shall never wish to live any place without this woman. I love very much this beautiful woman who is so concern for little children.’

  A snatch of words flashes into her mind from the last time she had heard La Pasionaria speak. What was it? ‘We shall not forget you, and when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves again, entwined with the laurels of the Spanish Republic’s victory – come back.’

  One day the children would go back. She must never let them forget that they were Spaniards. In time Eve would tell the girls about La Pasionaria, tell them that they should be proud to be children of the Republic. There would be ways to give them their own history.

  The Spanish Republic, as they had last seen it as refugees on the escape road, might as well be on another planet, and already the Republic was history. If Franco’s new regime ever tried to excise those years, Eve is certain that she and thousands like her would each have to be the custodian of their part and the time would come to tell it. Dimitri’s would be different from Eve’s, Eve’s different from Eugenia’s. Would Posa remember anything at all?

  Eve hopes that she will not. She hopes that Posa’s memories will begin here, with Ozz’s exuberant mother holding out her arms as though to gather them all to her.