by John Lodwick
The three passed through the turnstile, and immediately dissension arose. “The Flemings,” suggested Fiona, but Rumbold wished to start with France. After some argument they compromised and agreed to begin with the miscellaneous rooms; strange galleries these, ill-lit, ill-hung and dusty, but which yet contain work of startling merit, made more startling by the element of contrast . . . the licentious Boilly, the vapid but graceful Lancret, the non-licentious and libellously named Sodoma, two Cranach virgins and a number of splendiferous bull-fighting scenes by Fortuny, a better tauromachian than Goya.
From his seat the guardian watched them, not quite asleep, but nodding. “A race apart, those fellows,” remarked Rumbold. “I’m sure he wouldn’t stir, even if I produced a saw, and you two a pair of chisels. They must ransack the furthest reaches of Philistinism to find them.”
“Oh,” said Fiona, “even diamonds must become dull if you sit staring at them for a living.”
“I wonder if he has ever been in any other rooms but these?”
“Why not ask him?”
Rumbold did so. The man stared back at him aggressively. Yes, it transpired, he had once been with the Italian Primitives, but these had depressed him to such an extent that he had applied for and received a transfer. He had never been in any of the main Spanish rooms, but had helped to carry both the “Los Borrachos” of Velazquez and “The Forge of Vulcan” when these had been removed for cleaning. Every guardian had his preferences, and dislikes. For example in a roomful of Uccellos one had been driven to a nervous breakdown by the omnipresent foreshortening, from which he could not keep his eyes. The lascivious liked Boucher, of course, and Rubens, though they inclined to the view that these painters displayed their ladies’ charms too freely, so that in the end one grew bored.
“Boilly is better,” said the man. “Look over there. One always thinks her bodice is just going to burst . . . and yet it never does.”
“That is certainly a point of view,” said Rumbold.
They moved on, slicing across the centuries and through crocodiles of earnest schoolgirls who stared at Mañuela with mistrust. “And yet Fry,” said Fiona, “maintained that one should not see more than ten pictures in a day.”
“Fry was a fool,” replied Rumbold. “The more you see, the more exalted you become, and in the end the deadweight counts, however undigested.”
“Yet don’t you think it is too like Church?” asked Mañuela. “I mean . . . I, who know so little, enjoy it too, but I don’t enjoy the silence, and the way the floor creaks every time I take a step, and all the galleries ahead of me seen through the open door. And then the things one’s expected to say: it’s like the Stations of the Cross.”
They were in the Bosch room now. Bosch, Geronimo, fifteen this to fifteen that. “And there, of course, you have it,” said Rumbold. “The man must have been a glass-blower. There is no other explanation.”
“The horror of death,” suggested Fiona.
Yet this, too, seemed inadequate to describe these panels, with their lambent hues, their technical mastery, and imaginative genius.
“You have to kneel down to see the best bits,” said Rumbold. “Trust the gallery authorities for that.”
The Last Judgment: Ruskin, albeit somewhat shocked, has described the work in terms denying imitation. Yet Ruskin missed something: here was a painter to whom the appearance of evil was as important as the sin itself. The weird Lilliputian figures, naked as eggs and hairless, the Japanese garden background, the quite fantastic attention to detail: here was no stolid Fleming but a man illumined by the will of the Master, with a gift for unearthing the intentions of the wicked and for portraying them, not as one, but as a thousand awful warnings. It is said of French Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, when he saw this picture, that although a lifelong atheist he proceeded immediately to Church.
At tea, which they took in one of the fashionable cafés on the Puerta where warm brown dish-water serves the function of the tannic beverage, Rumbold showed himself morose, Fiona not less so, and it was left to Mañuela, her mouth half blocked by cake, to sustain the flagging conversation.
“It’s been a lovely, lovely, lovely day,” she said. “And so secular! You can’t imagine what fun it is to be out without a nun in sight, nor even a Soutane.”
“She can’t,” said Rumbold, indicating the Englishwoman. “But I can: the Jesuits held me captive for two years.” His head hurt him, as it often did, above the left temple, where a German had once hit him with a rifle butt. The café was half empty. Three of the waiters, for whom no other employment could be found, were hanging up Christmas decorations.
“They nearly had me in a cloister for life,” said Mañuela. “If I hadn’t run away perhaps they would have. The vocation must be sought and not awaited: that was what they said. ‘Look at St. Ursula,’ they said, ‘and St. Philomena’ . . . Oh, the saintly examples were not lacking, I can tell you.”
Signalling to one of the waiters Rumbold ordered chocolate éclairs. Rushing, willing enough to do his bidding, the man forgot that he held a paper garland in his hand, and tripped over it. Some merriment was caused.
“We leave,” said Rumbold, “to-morrow evening at 8.30.”
“And so?” said Fiona.
“And so if she wishes to be at the station by that time, I will book a ticket for her.”
“Oh, of course I wish it,” said Mañuela. “I wish nothing else. You are both so kind. I trust you absolutely. If there is any trouble . . . at the frontier for example . . . I shall know what to do. I shall take the blame.”
“There will be no trouble,” said Rumbold. “I am a dog who has been taught a trick or two in its time. Portuguese entry stamps are very poorly made. If you care to give me your passport now, I daresay that I can remedy the matter.”
“You forget the exit permit,” said Fiona drily.
“Carbon paper and a sharp pencil point will soon fix that,” he said. “I have my own to copy. The trouble with these authoritarian régimes is that they spend too much upon their police, and too little upon the quality of their rubber stamps.”
“Here is my passport,” said Mañuela.
A waiter approached: “Señor Rumbold?”
“Yes?”
“You are wanted on the telephone.”
“I think there must be some mistake.”
“No mistake, Señor. I was given an exact description of you.”
Rumbold rose. He entered the telephone booth and picked up the receiver. “Yes?” he said.
“How are you, Señor Rumbold?” said Aranjuez.
“You rang up to enquire about my health?”
“I rang up to enquire whether you were enjoying your tea.”
“Also, I suppose, to take the credit from the spies you send to follow me about?”
“Come, come, Señor Rumbold, no bitterness. Tell me, how is your tea?”
“I can only say that it reveals the dreadful position of your country’s imports.”
Aranjuez chuckled. The sound of his chuckle came over the wire, slightly amplified. “And you leave us to-morrow?” he said. “I am sad.”
“Yes,” said Rumbold. “I leave to-morrow. You can provide a brass band for me at the station if you like.”
“That would be out of office hours, I fear. Good luck, Señor Rumbold. Don’t forget my little proposition to you.”
Rumbold hung up. He returned to the tea-room. The table which he had occupied was empty: “Where are the two ladies?” he demanded of a waiter.
“The ladies have paid and gone, Señor.”
“They did not say where they were going?”
“No, Señor.” The waiter permitted himself a slight smile which vanished quickly as he intercepted Rumbold’s scowl.
“Good,” said the latter. He called for his coat
and hat, and left. He called at Fiona’s hotel, but they were not there. Nor were they at his own hotel, nor at the Escapada, which, at that hour was open for a Thé Dansant.
Rumbold called at both hotels, and at the night-club, several times throughout the evening, without result. In the intervals between these visits, he drank.
Seven
The train had already started. The wheels ran slowly, and lurching, across the maze of points. They were sitting in a small private carriage with four seats. They were alone.
“Now,” he said. “A little explanation, if you please.”
“Why didn’t you ask me when you met me on the platform?” said Fiona. She drew the travelling rug more tightly about her knees. She was a cold subject.
“You took every precaution, didn’t you?” said Rumbold. “You even telephoned to have your baggage removed from the hotel so as to be quite sure of not meeting me.”
“I wished to spare you trouble,” she said, lighting a cigarette.
Rumbold snatched the cigarette from her and stamped it flat upon the floor. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t adopt that attitude or I’ll not answer for the consequences.”
“No?” she queried, mockingly.
“No,” he said. He seized her hand and bent it backwards from the wrist.
“Ah, now you are becoming violent,” she said. “I was not wrong when I guessed that there was something of the brute in you.”
“Answer,” he said. “What is she to you?”
“She is . . . or rather was, an impediment.”
“You fixed that telephone call, I suppose?”
“Oh yes. I, too, know your friend Aranjuez. We have many memories in common.”
“Where did you spend last night?” he said.
“I spent it with her . . . Oh, quite chastely, I assure you. She was rather drunk, I’m afraid. I had to hold her head above the toilet for an hour. This afternoon I took her home. Unfortunately, her employers didn’t share my view of our little escapade. They sacked her.”
“At which point, I suppose,” said Rumbold, “you offered her some money?”
“Not only offered, but persuaded her to take it. You are too sentimental, my friend. The pure of heart are rarer than you think.”
The train was now passing Illescas, swinging as it took the rising gradient of the Sierra, swinging to the right as it followed the bend of the still distant Tagus.
“I suppose you realise I still have her passport?” he said.
“She won’t need it now. If she does, she can make another application. Honestly I acted for the best, even if my methods didn’t please you.”
“I shall never forgive you for this,” he said.
“Ah, don’t be silly. If you hadn’t the firm intention of forgiving me you wouldn’t have got on the train.”
“You forget that you arrived two minutes before it left.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Make yourself excuses. Square your very accommodating conscience: ‘I wanted to give a girl a helping hand, to take her to Portugal, but a woman prevented me from doing so.’ It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? All right. This train stops at Talavera. Get off, go back, and find her.”
But Rumbold was silent.
“Donde una puerta se cierra, otre se abre,” said Fiona. “When one door is shut another opens. Our friend Aranjuez was very fond of quoting that at one time. He likes Cervantes. A lot of these modern Torquemadas do.”
“Where is she now?” said Rumbold.
“I left her in a hôtel meublé with five thousand pesetas in her purse. She was a little tearful, of course, because . . . you must forgive me . . . I had given her to believe that I had telephoned you without success: that you wanted no more to do with her. You see . . . I am quite frank. I might easily have said that she ran away from me.”
“Hardly,” he said, “for you know that she would have run straight towards the station.”
“Not even that, I’m afraid, because we found that you had already taken the morning train.”
A man, passing down the corridor on his way to the lavatory, looked in. Rumbold pulled down the blinds.
“We have six hours before we reach the frontier,” he said. “We might use them to discuss certain matters.”
“By all means,” she said. “That was my intention, but you can see now that the discussion would not have gone as well à trois.”
Stretching herself upon the full length of her seat, she wrapped the travelling rug and mink around her. “These railway pillows are not bad either,” she said. “Why don’t you try yours, and switch out the light. What we have to say can best be said in darkness.”
Rumbold applied his finger to the switch. The small carriage, no bigger in area than a brake, was immersed in darkness . . . a darkness punctuated only by the distant lights of farm houses, three centuries old perhaps, the focal points of several dozen lives, the mortal habitation of several dozen more gone to the churchyard.
The weak radiance of lamps, three kilometres away above a cow-stall, shone now upon a stretch of fur, a lighted cigarette, a lock of hair, a thermos flask.
It is not good to travel too long by the railway, for the man seen with his scythe beside a pinewood, the girl seen hoeing, the commercial traveller with his brief case on a platform, are symbols of no solitude but your own.
Rumbold possessed no rug. He lay down and covered himself with his coat, doubling up his legs and breathing beneath the tweed to preserve the warmth. The carriage was very poorly heated.
“So you have met Aranjuez before?” he said.
“Yes. I met him in Minorca, at Ciudadelo.”
“You worked for him?”
“Oh yes, from time to time. We sank a submarine or two together.”
“What kind of submarines?”
“Italian. They used to lie up in the Santa Guldana creek below Ferrerias. That was the time of the Malta convoys. Yours was not the only parachute on the landing grounds, you know. There is a plateau there to-day, of course, but covered with fern and heather just like Surrey. I had nine visitors in all and distributed them in farms. I was, of course, above reproach . . . Aranjuez saw to that. On moonless nights our visitors used to swim out to the submarines and fix their limpet bombs, for the Italians were very cautious and wouldn’t tie up alongside the quay.”
“Weren’t you discovered?”
“Well, of course there was some suspicion, but it was Spanish pride that saved me in the end. You see, the Italians were only there by courtesy, and by courtesy of the Government in Madrid at that. When they began to kick up a fuss the local authorities kicked up a fuss as well. Italians in a martial mood are not popular, you know. Spaniards prefer them when they sell hot chestnuts or ice-cream.”
“You were paid for this work?”
“Oh, naturally. I should think so. Aranjuez, you must understand, was working both tickets at the time. He still is. For every submarine put out of action three hundred Frenchmen who had crossed the Pyrenees would be retained indefinitely in prison at Pamplona or Figueras . . . until the Allies provided petrol: one barrel for every Frenchman capable of fighting.”
“How did the agents get away?”
“By fishing-boat to Gibraltar. All but one, that is. The ninth got drunk in a bar and hit a Carabinero. He was arrested. That was the last I heard of him.”
“How much money did you get?”
“Three thousand pesetas for a drop. Only yesterday, Aranjuez was pestering me again to give him the receipts. He wants to prove himself a patriot, but of course London is a little shy about such matters. The war once over, the agent who has served his purpose comes up against the dead hand of Whitehall. You’ll find that, too, when you return.”
Rumbold stretched his feet. His feet were too long for
the banquette but by screwing, twisting, he was able to insert their extremities between the cushion and the carriage wall, and thus to live in hope of body warmth retained. To complete his defensive dispositions he held the thermos flask, scalding inside with coffee, against his chest.
“Why did you do all this?” he said. “Not for England, I’ll be sure.”
“England,” she said, “can sink beneath the sea for all I care. Indeed, I wish it would. Forty-six million people with the obligation to export their pots and pans and cutlery and coal, or die . . . is that a life, is that something to be proud of? As for their famous integrity, one saw something of that in the way of collaboration when the Channel Islands were occupied. If the Germans had got to Golders Green one might have seen a little more. England is the great anachronism, my friend: the Dodo who survived because twenty miles of sea protected it from a just retribution. No, wait,” she said, for she had observed Rumbold raising himself for the riposte. “Wait! Of course we still have our culture, our ninety-nine ways of patting a ball about. If England sank, how should we send a Test Team to Australia? Nevertheless, I prefer that solution to the new war which will soon come because we must sell our hideous egg-cups in the Balkans.”
From his hip pocket Rumbold pulled his brandy flask, and drank. “Your premises are excellent,” he said. “Your conclusions too. I would agree with all of them if I didn’t know that, seventeen years ago, some burly girls bruised you with cricket balls in the nets.”
The train rolled on. At this moment, three kilometres before Talavera-de-la-Reina, it was crossing a bridge between the Tagus and one of that river’s northern tributaries. Rumbold lowered the window and looked out: a bridge was, after all, a bridge, appurtenance of peace to-day but to-morrow perhaps once again the scene of conflict. His eyes met those of the sentry, a Moor, who had risen from a doze in his box to peer between the shutters of the sleeping cars. Inexplicably, and against his will—for so strong is the association of ideas caused by inanimate objects—Rumbold was reminded of another bridge between Dax and Toulouse, upon which, his buttocks outboard, his bowels creaking with dysentery, he had crouched beneath a German sentry, bearer of a Schmeisser.