by C. J. Sansom
‘Pedro, the father, he’s a foreman on a building site. Earns ten pesetas a day. They’ve got three kids and live in a two-bedroom flat. But the welcome they gave my friend Harry and I when we came here in ’31, we’d never seen anything like it. Inés, Señora Mera, she looked after me when I came out of hospital, wouldn’t hear of me going anywhere else. She’s indomitable, one of those tiny Spanish women made of fire.’ He looked at her with those huge eyes. ‘I could take you to meet them if you like.’ He smiled. ‘They’d be interested to meet you.’
‘Do you know, I’ve never met an ordinary Spanish family.’ She sighed. ‘The way people look at me in the street sometimes, I think there’s something disapproving. I don’t know what. Maybe I’m getting paranoid.’
‘You’re too well dressed.’
She looked down at her old coat in disbelief. ‘Me?’
‘Yes. That’s a good heavy coat, with a brooch.’
‘This old thing. It’s just coloured glass. I picked it up in Geneva.’
‘Even so, anything like that’s seen as ostentation. The people here are going through hell. Solidarity’s everything now, it has to be.’
Barbara took off her brooch. ‘There, is that better?’
He smiled. ‘That’s fine. One of the people.’
‘Of course you’ll always get the best, being in uniform.’
‘I’m a soldier.’ He looked offended. ‘I wear the uniform to show solidarity.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She cursed herself for putting her foot in it again. Why on earth did he bother with her? ‘Tell me about your public school.’
Bernie shrugged. ‘Rookwood’s what made me a communist. I fell for it all at first. Sons of the empire, cricket a game for gentlemen, the dear old school song. But I soon saw through it.’
‘Were you unhappy there?’
‘I learned to hide what I felt about it. That’s one thing they teach you. When I left and came back to London it was like a – a liberation.’
‘You haven’t any London accent left.’
‘No, that’s one thing Rookwood took away for good. If I try to speak cockney now, it just sounds stupid.’
‘You must have had friends, though?’ She couldn’t imagine him not having friends.
‘There was Harry, who came here with me five years ago. He was all right. His heart’s in the right place. We’ve lost touch now,’ he added sadly. ‘Moved into different worlds.’ He stopped and leaned against a tree. ‘So many good people like Harry fall for bourgeois ideology.’
‘I suppose I’m bourgeois, in your eyes.’
‘You’re something different.’ He winked.
NOVEMBER TURNED to December and sharp cold rains drove down from the Guadarramas. The Fascists were held in the Casa de Campo. They tried to break through from the north but were held there as well. The shelling went on but the desperate crisis was over. There were Russian fighters in the sky now, fast snub-nosed monoplanes, and if German raiders came over they were chased away. Sometimes there were dogfights over the city. People said the Russians had taken over everything and were running the Republic from behind the scenes. The government officials were even unfriendlier now and sometimes they had a frightened air. The children in the orphanage were moved overnight to a state camp somewhere outside Madrid; the Red Cross weren’t consulted.
Bernie kept seeking Barbara out. She spent half her evenings with him in the Gijón or one of the bars in the Centro. At weekends they would walk through the safe eastern part of the city and sometimes out to the countryside beyond. They shared an ironic sense of humour and laughed as they talked about books and politics and their childhoods, lonely in their different ways.
‘My dad’s shop’s one of five the owner has,’ Bernie told her one day. They were sitting on a field wall just outside town, enjoying the sun on a rare warm day. Clouds chased each other, their shadows skimming over the brown fields. It was hard to believe the front line was only a few miles away. ‘Mr Willis lives in a big house in Richmond, pays my dad a pittance. He knows Dad would never get another job, the war affected him; my mum does most of the work with a girl assistant.’
‘I suppose I was well off in comparison. My dad has a bike repair shop in Erdington. It’s always done well.’ She felt the sadness that always came on her when she spoke of her childhood; she almost never talked of it but found herself telling Bernie. ‘After my sister was born he hoped for a boy to take over the shop one day, but he got me. Then my mother couldn’t have any more.’ She lit a cigarette.
‘Are you close to your sister? I often wished I had one.’
‘No.’ Barbara turned her face away. ‘Carol’s very beautiful. She’s always loved showing herself off. Especially to me.’ She glanced at Bernie; he smiled encouragingly. ‘I had the brains though, I was the bright one, the one who got into the grammar school.’ She bit her lip at the memories those words brought back. She glanced at him again. Oh hell, she thought, in for a penny. Though it wrenched her heart she told him how she had been bullied from the day she went to the grammar school until she left at fourteen.
‘They called me speccy and frizzy-hair on my first day and I burst into tears. That’s where it all started, I can see that now. I suppose it marked me down as someone who could be tormented, made to cry. Then everywhere I went I had girls calling out about my hair, my glasses.’ She gave a long shuddering sigh. ‘Girls can be very cruel.’
She felt dreadful now, she wished she hadn’t blurted all this out, it had been a stupid thing to do. Bernie lifted his hand as though to take hers, then let it fall again. ‘It was the same at Rookwood. If you had something a bit different about you and wouldn’t fight back, you got picked on. They started on me when I came because of my accent, called me a pleb. I thumped a few of them and that put paid to that. Funny, I thought it was just public schools where those things happened.’ He shook his head. ‘Girls too, eh?’
‘Yes. I wish I’d hit them, but I was too well brought up.’ She threw away her cigarette. ‘All that bloody misery, just because I’ve got glasses and look a bit odd.’ She stood up abruptly and walked a few paces away, gazing at the town, a distant smudge. On the far side of it she could see tiny flashes, like pinpoints, where the Fascists were shelling.
Bernie came over and stood beside her. He gave her another cigarette.
‘You don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Look odd. Don’t be silly. And I like those glasses.’
She felt angry as she always did when people paid her compliments. Just trying to make her feel better about how she was. She shrugged. ‘Well, I got away,’ she said. ‘They wanted me to stay in that hell hole, go on to university, but I wouldn’t. I left when I was fourteen. Worked as a typist till I was old enough to start nursing.’
He was silent a moment. Barbara wished he would stop looking at her. ‘How did you get involved with the Red Cross?’ he asked.
‘The school used to have people to give talks on Wednesday afternoons. This woman came and told us about the work the Red Cross did, trying to help refugees in Europe. Miss Forbes.’ She smiled. ‘She was stout and middle-aged and had grey hair spilling out from under this silly flowery hat but she seemed so kind, she tried so hard to get across how important the work was. I joined them as a junior volunteer at first. I’d just about lost faith in the human race by then; they gave it back to me. Some.’ She felt tears pricking at her eyes and moved back towards the wall.
‘And you ended up in Geneva?’
‘Yes. I needed to get away from home too.’ She blew out a long cloud of smoke and looked at him. ‘What did your parents think about you volunteering for the International Brigades?’
‘Just another disappointment. Like my leaving university.’ He shrugged. ‘I feel guilty sometimes, about leaving them.’
To work for the party, Barbara thought. And be a sculptor’s model. She imagined him without clothes for a second, and dropped her eyes.
‘They didn’t
want me to come here of course,’ he said, ‘they didn’t understand.’ Bernie gave her that hard direct look again. ‘But I had to come out here. When I saw the newsreels, the refugee columns. We have to destroy fascism, we have to.’
HE TOOK HER to see the Mera family, but the visit was not a success: Barbara didn’t understand the family’s accents, and though they were kind to her she felt uneasy in the crowded muddle of their flat. They greeted Bernie as a hero and she gathered he had done something brave in the Casa de Campo. He shared a room in the tenement flat with one of the sons, a thin boy of fifteen with the pale hollow face of a consumptive. On the way home Barbara said it could be dangerous for Bernie to share a room with him. He replied with one of his occasional bursts of anger.
‘I’m not going to treat Francisco like a leper. With good food and the right medicine you can cure TB.’
‘I know.’ She felt ashamed of herself.
‘The Spanish working class is the best in the world. They know what it’s like to fight oppression and they’re not afraid to. They practise real solidarity with each other and they’re internationalists, they believe in socialism and they work for it. They’re not greedy materialists like most British trade unionists. They’re the best of Spain.’
‘I’m sorry. I just – oh, I couldn’t understand what they said, and – oh, I’m being bourgeois, aren’t I?’ She looked at him nervously but his anger had evaporated.
‘At least you’re starting to see it. It’s more than most people can.’
Barbara could have understood if Bernie had just wanted her as a friend. But he was always trying to take her hand in his and twice he had tried to kiss her. Why, she asked, why did he want her when he could have had anybody? She could only think it was because she was English, that despite all his internationalism he wanted an Englishwoman. She dreaded that his telling her earlier there was nothing wrong with her appearance had been a ploy to get her into bed. She knew men weren’t fussy; she had been caught that way once and that was the worst memory, one that filled her mind with shame. Her longings and confusion ate her up.
Bernie’s arm was healing, out of plaster though still in a sling. He reported to military headquarters every week. When he was fit, he said, they were going to transfer him to a new training camp for English volunteers in the south. She dreaded the day.
‘I offered to help with new fighters who’ve come across from England,’ he told her. ‘But they say that’s all taken care of.’ He frowned. ‘I think they’re worried my damned public-school accent might put off the working-class boys who are coming over.’
‘Poor Bernie,’ she said. ‘Caught between two classes.’
‘I’ve never been caught,’ he said bitterly. ‘I know where my class loyalties are.’
ONE SATURDAY early in December they went for a walk to the northern suburbs. The district was full of the houses of the rich, big villas set in their own gardens. It was very cold; there had been a light dusting of snow the night before. Most of it had melted, leaving the air chill and damp, but there were still white patches on the broad roofs of the houses.
Many of the suburb’s inhabitants had fled to the Nationalist zone or been imprisoned and some of the houses were shut up. Others had been occupied by squatters, the gardens left to run wild or planted with vegetables; chickens and pigs roamed in some of them. The mess offended Barbara’s sense of tidiness but she was beginning now to see things with Bernie’s eyes: these people needed homes and food.
They paused before the gates of a big house where washing hung from the windows. A girl of fifteen or so was milking a cow tied to a tree in the middle of a lawn speckled with cowpats. When the girl saw Bernie’s military greatcoat, she looked up and gave the clenched-fist salute.
‘They’ll have had their houses shot up by Franco’s artillery, or been bombed out,’ Bernie said.
‘I wonder where the original owners went.’
‘They’ve gone, that’s what matters.’
A sound made them look up at the sky. A big German bomber was ploughing along, accompanied by a couple of small fighters. Three red-nosed Russian planes circled them, the manoeuvres leaving trails of white vapour stretching across the blue sky. Barbara craned her neck to look. The display seemed beautiful until you realized what was happening up there.
A church stood at the end of the street, a heavy nineteenth-century Gothic building. The doors were open and a banner hung outside. Establo de la revolución. Revolution stables.
‘Come on,’ Bernie said. ‘Let’s take a look.’
The interior had been wrecked, most of the pews removed and the stained-glass windows broken. Statues had been pulled from their niches and flung to the floor; bales of straw were stacked in a corner. The back of the church had been railed off and a flock of sheep penned in. They were closely packed together and as Bernie and Barbara approached they shuffled away in fear, bleating and jostling, their eyes with the strange sideways-pointing pupils wide. Bernie made soothing noises, trying to calm them.
Barbara approached the heap of broken statues. A plaster head of the Virgin, eyes full of painted tears, looked up reproachfully from the floor, reminding her of the convent where the children had been billeted. She felt Bernie at her elbow.
‘Tears of the Virgin,’ she said with an awkward laugh.
‘The Church has always supported the oppressors. They call Franco’s rebellion a crusade, bless the fascist soldiers. You can’t blame the people for being angry.’
‘I’ve never understood religion, all that dogma. But it’s sad.’
She felt his good arm circle her body and pull her round. She was so surprised she had no time to react as he leant forward. She felt the warmth of his cheek and then a hot moistness as he kissed her. She pulled away, staggering back.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
He stood looking shamefaced, a lick of blond hair falling across his brow.
‘You wanted it,’ he said. ‘I know you did. Barbara, I’ll be at this training camp in a few weeks. I might never see you again.’
‘So what d’you want, a bit of sex with an Englishwoman? Well not with me!’ Her voice rose, ringing around the church. The sheep, frightened, bleated plaintively.
He stepped towards her, shouting back now. ‘You know it’s not like that! You know how I feel, you must, are you blind?’
‘Blind with my stupid glasses, is that it?’
‘Can’t you see I love you!’ he shouted.
‘Liar!’
She ran out of the church and down the path. As she went through the gate she skidded on a patch of wet snow and collapsed sobbing against the stone wall. She heard Bernie come up behind her. He laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘Why should I be a liar? Why? I do love you. You feel the same, I’ve seen it, why won’t you believe me?’
She turned to face him. ‘Because I’m ugly and clumsy and … No!’ She buried her face in her hands, sobbing wildly. A small boy walking by, barefoot and carrying a piglet, stopped and stared at them.
‘Why do you hate yourself so?’ Bernie asked gently.
She wanted to scream. She wiped her eyes, pushed him away, and began walking down the street. Then the little boy shouted, ‘Look! Look!’ Barbara turned; he had put the squealing piglet under one arm and was pointing excitedly upwards with the other. High in the sky one of the German fighters had been hit and was plunging to earth. There was a loud crump from some way off and the boy cheered. After a quick upward glance, Bernie hurried towards her.
‘Barbara, wait.’ He stepped in front of her. ‘Please, listen. Never mind sex, I don’t care about that, but I love you, I do love you.’
She shook her head.
‘Tell me you don’t feel the same and I’ll walk away now.’
Into Barbara’s head had come a picture of a dozen little girls, calling after her in the playground. ‘Speccy four-eyes, frizzy carrot hair!’
‘I’m sorry, it’s no use, I can’t �
�� no.’
‘You don’t understand, you don’t see …’
Barbara turned to face him and her heart lurched at the pain and sadness in his face. Then she jumped, hearing a screaming noise from above. She looked up. The second German fighter had been hit and was falling towards them. Already it was terrifyingly close, flames pouring from its side in a long red-yellow trail. It fell like a stone; she saw the propellers, still turning, shiny as insects’ wings. Bernie was staring upward too. Barbara pushed him away and as he staggered back the air was filled with a giant roar and she saw the high wall of the house they were passing leap outwards at her. Something hit her head with a terrible smashing pain.
She was only unconscious for a moment. When she came round she was aware of the pain in her head, she tried frantically to remember what had happened, where she was. She opened her eyes and saw Bernie leaning over her, dimly because her glasses were gone. There were bricks and dust all around. He was leaning over her and he was crying, she had never seen a man cry. ‘Barbara, Barbara, are you all right, oh God, I thought you were dead. I love you, I love you!’
She let him lift her up. She buried her face in his chest and started weeping; they were both sitting crying in the street. She heard footsteps, people crowding round from the houses.
‘Are you safe?’ someone called. ‘My God, look!’
‘I’m all right,’ Barbara said. ‘My glasses, where are my glasses?’
‘They’re here,’ Bernie said softly. He handed them to her and she put them on. She saw the garden wall had fallen down, only just missing them, showering the road with bricks. One of them must have hit her. Flames and black smoke poured from every window of the villa, and the tail of the plane was sticking out of the collapsed roof. Barbara saw a black swastika; it had been painted over in yellow but it showed through. She lifted her hand to her head. It came away covered with blood. An old black-shawled woman put her arm round her. ‘It is only a cut, señorita. Ay, that was a miracle.’
Barbara reached a hand out to Bernie. He was nursing his injured arm, his face pale. Both their coats were white with dust.