by Irene Carr
Now she worried: was he safe?
Matthew Ballantyne, his tall body folded into the bucket seat, clung to the wheel of the ambulance as it rocked slowly along the rutted road. The night was dark, the sky overcast and rain washed across the windscreen as the wipers flapped. He rubbed a hand over his sandy hair, cropped to a rusty stubble now, and blinked tired eyes as he strained to pierce the gloom. The hooded headlamps of the ambulance shed barely enough light to illumine the road for a few yards ahead. It was no more than an elderly Fiat van, roughly converted to carry stretchers and kept running only by Matt’s constant attention.
He nursed the van now, well aware of its age and fragility. He was eager to return to the forward hospital which was both home and base for himself and Helen. He had left it that morning to carry some wounded to a base hospital far in the rear. Helen Diaz had been safe and well when he left her but he was worried about her now. He had worried about her since they crossed the border into Spain and shells had fallen close to their hospital in the past few days.
The ambulance bounced into and out of a pothole and he twisted the wheel to hold it on course as it tried to swerve off the road. For a second it snaked back and forth, skidding across the muddy surface, taking up all of the road. As it straightened under his steering he breathed thanks that the road was empty.
Earlier he had passed a stream of men trudging in the opposite direction. He had thought they were returning from the front line. They had stared up at him, eyes glittering in pale smudges of faces as they were caught in the light. They all looked startled by his sudden appearance and gaped as the ambulance swayed past. Once he had to pull off the road to let a battery of guns canter by, the drivers flogging the weary horses that pulled the guns. Afterwards the road had been empty for a half-hour or so as the ambulance crept on, but just a few minutes ago he had passed a group who seemed to be digging a trench by the side of the road. They had scattered when he drove down on them, looming out of the rain and darkness. One of them had fired on him as he rolled on down the road, and automatically he ducked and cursed them but without surprise. Men became jumpy and trigger happy when close to the front line. That was another thing he had learned in this Spanish war.
He was almost there now and could see what had once been the outlying buildings of the village. The place had been fought over before and shelling had reduced a lot of it to heaps of rubble. There were people on the road again, soldiers of course because the villagers had left to escape the fighting. Matt could understand that. He had seen what the fighting did to combatants and neutrals, innocent bystanders alike. He had pictures burnt into his mind that he would never expunge.
Now he turned into the little square, and there stood the house in the corner that had belonged to some big landowner but was now the hospital. He was looking for Helen Diaz already as he extinguished the lights of the ambulance, braked it to a halt in front of the house and switched off the ignition. It was only then that he saw the flag hanging above the door. It had not hung there when he left that morning. It was the banner of Franco’s Fascist army.
He sat frozen by shock in the seat of the ambulance. Now he remembered that his fellow Republican soldiers he had left in the village that morning had looked different, although they had worn the usual mixture of khaki uniforms with miscellaneous items of civilian clothing such as leather or sheepskin jackets, or blankets serving as capes. Those in the village now wore different helmets, the coal-scuttle type like those of the German army. Now he understood why the earlier traffic on the road had all been one way and why the men had been startled by his appearance. They had thought he was mad to be heading in that direction because they knew he was driving into the arms of the enemy.
Where was Helen? He had last seen her in the hospital. Was she still there? He decided that was the first place to look. He swallowed. There was no sentry posted at the door though there might be one inside. Soldiers occasionally came out or went in, each time letting out a blink of light as they pushed aside the black-out curtain hung inside the doors. The darkness was on his side.
He got down from the ambulance and walked steadily to the street that ran down the side of the building. He was tensed, ready for the first shout if someone challenged him as an enemy, ready to run, though he did not know where. But no one yelled at him to stop, and here was the side gate. The house was built in a square and this gate opened on to a passage which ran through the ground floor of the house to the courtyard within. The gate was wrought iron and he could see through its ornate twinings. The passage inside was empty.
He pushed open the gate and walked through the passage, his boot heels clicking on the paving, echoing under the arched roof of the passage. The courtyard was also paved, with tall shrubs standing like sentries in the darkness. Matt walked around the courtyard, peeping through cracks at the sides of windows where the black-out curtains did not quite cover, looking into the wards on the ground floor. He did not see Helen.
He stopped at a door that led to the front of the house and the stairs to the upper floor. Beyond that door would be light, no darkness to hide him. Only his tunic with its Red Cross armband would immediately identify him as serving in the Republican Army, so he pulled it off and looked for somewhere to hide it. Then he saw the box standing to one side of the door. It was a crate about a cubic foot in size with a rope carrying-handle on each of two sides. He folded the tunic so only its inside showed, laid it on the top of the crate then picked that up by its handles, lifting it to chest height. He jammed his jaw down on the tunic to hold it in place, and that also served to hide his face to some extent. He had soon learned that his pale blue eyes were an oddity in Spain, bound to make him noticeable, and he could not afford that. The door opened outwards. He pulled it towards him with one finger, still holding the box, then eased it open with his foot and walked in. He wondered if he would get out again.
He crossed the hall, heading towards the stairs. This was the reception area for the hospital. When there was a battle it would be filled with stretchers bearing wounded men. Matt knew there would soon be many. The breaking of the line, the Republican retreat and Nationalist advance, had all happened too swiftly for the wounded to be brought in. But they would be. There were a half-dozen now, and one clerk moving among them, questioning them, reading the labels tied to them, writing down their details in a book. He was one of the enemy and glanced around as Matt crossed the hall but saw nothing suspicious in some soldier in fatigues carrying a box, and went back to his work.
There were two sentries on duty at the front door but they stood leaning on their rifles and smoking, and did not challenge Matt. He realised one of them was supposed to be guarding the door by which he had entered but had gone to while away the weary hours in talk with his comrade. They were surely only there to prevent prisoners escaping – why should anyone break into the hospital?
Matt climbed the stairs and started his search of the wards up there. The wards were just rooms with five or six narrow iron cots crammed into them. Their doors stood open so the air could circulate, held there by wedges jammed under them, so Matt did not have to enter each room, could peer in from the corridor outside. He was three quarters of the way round when he saw Helen.
She stooped beside a cot assisting a doctor working on a wounded man. Instead of her white uniform and cap she wore the soldier’s clothes she kept for off-duty hours. She stroked the man’s brow and held his hand. Matt saw the young doctor was Luis Zamora, one of the Republican staff, now a prisoner with Helen. As Matt clumped down the ward between the close-packed cots she looked around and her lips parted in shock. Matt stopped at her side and said softly, ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
The doctor looked at Matt, a sideways glance of startled recognition. Then he said, ‘Take her, Matthew. God knows what they will do to us.’
The next cot was occupied, the soldier’s greatcoat hanging above it at its head, but he was just a still shape under the grey blanket that was pulled up to
cover his face. Matt took the greatcoat and thrust it at Helen: ‘Put that on.’ A cap hung on another cot, its owner snoring, mouth open. Matt shoved the cap on to Helen’s head and she grimaced but settled it there. It covered her short, dark hair.
Helen struggled into the coat that was damp and stiff with mud. She hissed, ‘You shouldn’t have come! How will we get out? They won’t do anything to me!’
Matt was not so sure, because he had heard stories of the executions carried out by both sides. He was afraid for himself and for her. ‘Just do as I say.’ He led the way, pausing to stoop and yank the wedge from under the door of the room, then picked up his crate again and headed for the stairs. Behind him the door swung, creaking, on a draught of air and then slammed shut. The two sentries at the front door looked up.
Matt started his descent, crate held two-handed before him and slightly to one side so he could see the stairs, but so that it half-hid his face. He muttered to Helen, ‘Through the courtyard to the gate on the left. The van is in the square.’ He realised he should have moved it to the side gate and left it with its engine running, but that might have aroused suspicion. He thrust the argument from his mind as useless now and concentrated on the present.
The light was not good in the hall, with just the one bulb hanging from its flex. Helen was covered by the over-large coat from neck to ankles and the cap shadowed her face, but Matt wondered if the disguise would pass a close inspection. The guards were watching them descend, and had to be distracted. Matt seemed to slip on the last treads and the crate clattered and skidded across the floor of the hall with Matt shambling in pursuit, bent double as if trying to catch it, but in fact still hiding his eyes.
The guards were guffawing, one of them pointing a finger at Matt, both watching him. He seized the crate and hoisted it again, pushing his tunic under his chin, still holding the wedge in one hand. Now was the time . . . He turned away from the guards and strode towards the rear door. Helen was ahead of him, had got off the stairs unnoticed by the guards and now she brushed the black-out curtain aside and pushed the door open. One of the guards shouted behind Matt on a rising note of enquiry. He did not understand a word and bawled back, ‘Buenas noches!’ Then he went through the door. As he turned he saw the guards starting towards him and lifting their rifles. He threw the crate into the passage and slammed the door, jamming the wedge under it with a kick of his boot, and ran.
Helen was a shadow flitting across the courtyard, the skirts of the greatcoat flapping like wings. Matt galloped after her, through the gate and up the street to the square.
As she climbed in one side of the ambulance, he leaned in the other and switched on the ignition. Then he ran round to the front, seized the starting handle and whirled it furiously, his eyes on the front door of the house. The engine fired and ran. He swung up into his seat, shoving his tunic on to the floor out of the way, and reversed the ambulance in a tight half-circle, skidding on the mud.
That was when he saw the guards again, not at the front door but in the street by the side door. They had somehow smashed open the door to the courtyard against the restraining wedge and now ran towards the sound of the gunned engine.
‘Get down!’ he shouted at Helen.
She slid down in her seat and shouted back, ‘You get down!’
The ambulance snaked and slid across the square, mud squirting up from under its wheels, then turned out on to the road. The rifles crack-crack!ed behind them and something struck the ambulance with a clang! like a blacksmith’s hammer. Matt winced and shrank down in his seat still further so his knees were against the dash. Then he told himself that the back of the seat would not stop a bullet anyway.
At last they were on the road, the village left behind them, and there was no more shooting. Slowly they eased themselves up until they were sitting upright again. After some minutes during which their breathing returned to normal and their nerves quietened, Matt asked, ‘What happened? When I left this morning we were nearly two miles behind the line!’
Helen took off the cap and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Some guns went through the village, teams of horses pulling them, all galloping and sweating . . .’ She told how she and the other staff were captured and rounded up. ‘Then their officer talked to Dr Zamora and he said they were going to let us carry on looking after the wounded because none of their own medical staff had come up yet. That’s where you found us.’ Helen paused, then said, ‘Their forward troops must be ahead of us now.’
Matt nodded agreement, peering through the rain. He had slowed from the wild pace he had set escaping from the village. Speed was impossible on that road and in those conditions of darkness and muddy, pot-holed surface. ‘We might have to leave the ambulance and try to sneak past them on foot, because they’ll be on the road.’ He remembered the group he had passed who had appeared to be digging a trench.
They had no chance to abandon the ambulance. The group of soldiers showed suddenly as one man standing in the middle of the road, hand raised, with others at the side. Matt pressed his foot to the floor and held on. The old ambulance responded, though sluggishly, and the man on the road jumped aside. Then he and the others were no more than thin yells fading in the night. Matt and Helen slumped with relief. They covered another half-mile and then the engine hammered madly and died. Matt threw out the clutch and the ambulance coasted to a halt.
Helen asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
Matt said wearily, ‘Old age at bottom, but it’s just seized up, I think. Anyhow, we can’t stop here. God knows who might come along. We’d better walk on.’
He shrugged into his tunic. Helen stood small in the flapping greatcoat under the rain, her wet face turned up to him. He said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? Oh, Matt!’ She reached up to pull his head down and kissed him. After a while they set off, walking hand in hand. They walked all through the night. Sometimes they talked but mostly they just trudged along happily. After two hours they caught up with the last and slowest of the stragglers on the retreat. An hour after that they passed the point where the Republicans were trying to establish another defensive line. They went through among the stragglers in the night and no one took any notice. Matt said reluctantly, ‘We’ll have to find another medical unit and report to them.’
Helen answered without enthusiasm, ‘There must be one somewhere.’ They did not find it but did not care greatly.
As the sun rose they came to a small town. They had been walking for eight hours, and that after a long day, but they were laughing as they entered the town. They found a pension down a narrow side street and Helen bargained with the old woman, pausing to say, ‘I haven’t any money, Matt. How much have you got?’ When he had counted his pesetas Helen went back to her haggling. The bargain was struck and the old woman fed them bread and sausage and thin, black coffee. Then she showed them to a small room with a double bed that almost filled the floor, and closed the door behind them.
Matt asked, ‘Whose is this?’
Helen avoided his eyes. ‘Ours. Look, Matt, the money you have will just pay for one room and our board for a couple of days. If we had a room each we’d be out of here tomorrow. I told her we were married.’ She held up her hand to show the ring. It had been her mother’s, worn on the index finger of her left hand. It was now on the third. ‘I changed it over behind my back.’
Matt took her in his arms.
It was morning of the next day when the soldiers came for them.
24
November 1938
‘Tell him they weren’t hiding!’ Chrissie Ballantyne ran long fingers through her dark hair and pleaded with Jefferies, the young man who had come with her from the British Consulate in Barcelona, but her eyes were on the Spanish officer behind the desk. ‘They’d got away when their unit was overrun and just found a place to rest!’ She waited while Jefferies rattled away in his fluent Catalan.
It was two weeks since she had left home, two weeks of travelling and waiting for permits. Sh
e had lived out of her small suitcase and slept where she happened to be, in a wooden seated railway carriage or on a station bench, in a pension or a hut abandoned by some peasant. Chrissie had taken it all with a shrug because she had lived in spartan conditions in her youth, but she was weary now.
She had spent the whole of one long day trudging the narrow streets of this little town, seeking out one officer after another. One after the other they all told her that Matt and Helen had been reported missing and then found hiding in a backstreet pension. They had with them the cap and greatcoat of an enemy soldier, which could mean that they were spies. The punishment for either spying or desertion was execution by firing squad. Jefferies had told her unhappily, ‘I’m afraid there have been a lot of executions.’
Chrissie shivered. Matt was her baby, her firstborn, and Helen was a girl she had taken to her heart. The town was in chaos, close to the front line now, the streets full of weary men coming back from the line or going up to it, guns pulled by skinny horses, small tanks clanking and grinding over the cobbles. This office was in some sort of headquarters, with officers, clerks and signallers crammed into every room, messengers continually entering and leaving. Night had fallen and the windows were shuttered and blacked out. The rooms were hot and smelt of sweat and leather, cigarette smoke and cordite. Even in the bustle of this place she could hear the rumble of the guns.
Now this last officer was shaking his head. Chrissie felt the tears coming, but then . . . He was nodding, slowly.
Chrissie did not take her eyes from him, but asked Jefferies, ‘What did he say?’
He wiped his sweating face with his handkerchief. ‘I’ve threatened him with all the power of the British Empire and he says that he will release your son as he is a British subject, but he is to leave the country at once. The woman he says is Spanish and so must face the consequences of her actions. He cannot do more.’
‘He must! Helen Diaz is the daughter of a Spaniard but of an English mother and she was born in England!’ Chrissie’s weariness and fear conspired together and now the tears came. ‘I have known her since she was a child!’ She held out her hand at thigh level. ‘She is a schoolfriend of my daughter, she lives in my house, she and my son are lovers!’ She broke off there, surprised at those last words but accepting that they were probably true. Why else was Matt there?