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‘My husband is fighting at Jarama.’
A hush as silent as night settled on the people below her. She saw their poor clothes and their hungry faces and she felt their need for comfort.
‘He did not want to fight.’ She paused. ‘None of us wanted to fight.’
Gunfire sounded distantly.
‘All we wanted was enough money to live decently – decently, comrades, not grandly. All we wanted was a decent education for our children.’
A child whimpered in the congregation.
The two sidesmen seemed to relax; one leaned against a pillar.
‘All we wanted was a share of this country. Not a grand estate, just a decent plot that belonged to us and not to those who paid us a duro for the honour of tilling their land.’
Sunlight shining through the remnants of a stained-glass window cast trembling pools of colour on the upturned faces.
‘All we wanted in this city was a decent wage so that we could feed our families and give them homes and live almost as grandly as the priests.’
She stared at the sky which the bombers had vacated and whispered, ‘Forgive me God.’ But although she knew not where the words came from, they could not be stemmed.
‘No, we did not want to fight: they made us, the enemy who sought to deny us our birthright. But now, at their behest, we shall win and Spain will be shared among us.’
They clapped, and then they cheered, and hope illumined their faces. The two sidesmen clapped and exchanged glances that said they need not have worried. Ana paused professionally, then held up her hands, palms flattened against her audience.
‘I repeat, Spain will be shared among us. Not among foreigners.’ A shuffling silence. The two men snapped upright and stared at her. ‘We shall always be grateful for the help that has been given to us – without that we might have perished – but let us never forget that the capital of Spain is Madrid, not Moscow.’
The audience applauded but now they were more restrained. The sidesmen walked briskly out of the church.
In a bar near the church, where brandy was still available to distinguished revolutionaries, Diego said, ‘Why did you do that to me?’
‘Do what?’
‘Attack the Communists.’
‘Because I am an Anarchist like you.’
‘But I’m not: I’m a Communist.’
Diego leaned forward on his stool and stared despairingly into his coffee laced with Cognac.
Ana folded her arms. ‘You are what?’
‘A Communist. They have even promised me a party card. That was a Communist meeting; I sent Ramón to tell you.’
‘Ramón? Who is this Ramón?’
‘My assistant. But he probably got drunk on his way.’ He stroked his damp moustache with one nail-bitten finger. ‘You were making an anti-Communist speech at a Communist meeting. Mi madre!’ He smiled grimly.
‘I was making a pro-Spanish speech.’
‘The capital of Spain is Madrid, not Moscow … Yes, very patriotic, cousin. I congratulate you on condemning us to the firing squad.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Ana gulped her coffee. ‘How could any true Spaniard disagree?’
‘It wasn’t exactly diplomatic. Not when Moscow is supplying us with our arms.’
‘We are paying for them in gold.’
‘They have our gold: we still need their arms.’
‘And so now we should give them our souls? Do you want Spain to become a colony of the Soviet Union?’
‘Keep your voice down; you aren’t in the pulpit now.’ Diego took off his glasses and glanced around as though he could see better without them. ‘We need them,’ he said. ‘Without them we are doomed.’
Ana said softly, ‘Why did you sell your soul, Diego?’
‘Because I believe that salvation lies with the Communists.’
‘What about those dreams of Anarchism you once cherished? “There is only one authority and that is in the individual.” Who said that, Diego?’
‘Me?’
‘You. What did they buy you with, Diego?’
‘We are all fighting for the same cause.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘I have been promised a high office in the administration when the war is over.’
‘And a grand house and a decent salary?’
‘Commensurate with my office,’ Diego said.
‘Perhaps,’ Ana said, ‘they will pay you in roubles.’
‘I tell you, we are all fighting for the same cause.’
It was then that Ana realized that one contestant had been missing from the conversation – the enemy, the Fascists.
Has it come to this? she asked herself. She strode out of the bar and down the street to the cinema where her children were watching the Marx Brothers.
On the Jarama front the fighting had stopped for the night. The combatants had retired to debate how best to kill each other in the morning and, except for the intermittent explosions of shells fired to keep the enemy awake, the battlefield was quiet.
In a concrete bunker captured from the Republicans Colonel Carlos Delgado considered the two foreigners interfering in his war. A picture of Franco hung from the wall recently vacated by Stalin; a map of the Jarama valley and its environs, crayoned with blue and red arrows, was spread across the desk.
Delgado’s fingers searched his freshly-shaven cheeks for any errant bristles, tidied the greying hair above his ears where his cap had rested. His khaki-green tunic was freshly pressed and his belt shone warmly like dark amber. His voice, like Franco’s, was high-pitched.
‘So why,’ he asked in English, ‘were two mercenaries fighting on opposite sides sharing a shell-hole?’
‘I guess you could call it force of circumstances,’ Tom Canfield said.
‘It does neither of you any credit. What is your name?’ he asked Canfield.
‘You’ve got it there in front of you. José Espinosa.’
‘Your real name: non-intervention is a stale joke.’
‘Okay, what the hell – Thomas Canfield.’
‘Why are you fighting for the rabble, Señor Canfield?’
‘Name, rank and number. Nothing more. Isn’t that right, Colonel?’
The glossy captain pulled his long-barrelled pistol from its holster. ‘Answer the colonel,’ he said.
‘You don’t have a rank or number,’ Delgado said.
‘José Espinosa does.’
‘Are you Jewish?’
‘Espinosa, José, pilot, 3805.’
‘This isn’t a movie, Señor Canfield. Please enlighten me: I cannot understand – really I can’t – why any reasonable man should want to fight for a ragged army of peasants and city hooligans whose sport is burning churches and murdering anyone industrious enough to have earned more money than them.’
‘Then you don’t understand very much, Colonel.’
‘Anti-Hitler? Anti-Mussolini? Anti-Fascist?’
‘Anti-gangster,’ Tom said.
‘So we have one anti-Fascist.’ Delgado turned to Adam Fleming who was standing, legs apart, hands clasped behind his back, beside Canfield. ‘And one anti-Communist. Do you both find Spain an agreeable location to indulge your politics?’
‘Your politics, sir,’ Adam said.
‘Nice climate,’ Tom said.
Delgado lit an English cigarette, a Senior Service. ‘You, I presume,’ he said to Canfield, ‘were trying to find your way back to the Republican lines.’
‘Wherever those are,’ Tom said.
‘And you,’ to Fleming, ‘were hiding from an unexploded shell?’
‘I got lost,’ Adam said.
‘Perhaps we should provide foreign mercenaries with compasses as well as rifles.’
‘Good idea,’ Tom said. ‘They might find the right side to fight for.’
The captain prodded him in the back with the barrel of his pistol.
Delgado blew a jet of smoke across the bunker. It billowed in the light of the hurricane lamps.
‘So what shall I do with the two of you? One American fighting for the enemy, one Englishman displaying cowardice in the face of the enemy …’
‘That’s a lie,’ Adam said.
‘He was concussed,’ Tom said.
‘Your loyalty is touching. But loyalty to what, an anti-Communist?’
‘I’m not a Communist,’ Tom said.
‘Then it is you who is serving on the wrong side.’ Delgado smoked ruminatively and precisely. ‘There are a lot of misguided men fighting for the Republicans. Good officers in the Fifth Regiment, like Lister and Modesto and El Campesino, of course. When he was only 16 he blew up four Civil Guards. Then he fought in Morocco – on both sides! Would you consider flying for us, Señor Canfield?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Tom said.
‘I rarely joke,’ Delgado said. ‘I see no point to it. But I’m glad you’re staying loyal to the side you mistakenly chose to fight for.’ He dropped his cigarette on the floor, squashing it with the heel of one elegant boot. ‘Now all that remains is to decide the method of execution.’
Spray broke over the prow of HMS Esk as it knifed its way through the swell on its approach to Marseilles but Martine Ruiz, standing on the deck with her five-year-old daughter, Marisa, didn’t seem to notice it as it brushed her face and trickled in tears down her cheeks.
What concerned her was the future that lay ahead through the spume and the greyness for herself, Marisa and her three-day-old baby. How could she settle in England?
What would she do without Antonio? Why did he have to fight when all that had been necessary was to slip away to some Fascist-held city such as Seville or Granada in the south or Salamanca or Burgos in the north and lie low until Madrid was captured? She wished dearly that Antonio was here beside her so that she could scold him.
She stumbled across the lurching deck and went below. Her breasts hurt and her womb ached with emptiness.
The baby was as she had left it in a makeshift cot, a drawer padded with pillows; Able Seaman Thomas Emlyn Jones was also as she had left him, sitting beside the drawer on the bunk reading a copy of a magazine called Razzle.
He hastily folded the magazine and placed it on the bunk beneath his cap.
‘Not a sound,’ he said. ‘Not a dicky bird.’ He stared at his big, furry hands. ‘I was wondering … How are you going to get to England?’
‘Train,’ she said. ‘Then ferry.’
‘Lumbering cattle trucks, those ferries. You mind she isn’t sick,’ pointing to the sleeping baby.
Martine glanced at herself in the mirror. There were shadows under her eyes and her face was drained.
‘It is me who will be sick.’ She spoke English slowly and with care.
‘And me,’ Marisa said. She lay on the bunk and closed her eyes.
‘You’d be surprised how many sailors are sea-sick,’ Taffy Jones said.
Martine, who was becoming queazy, stared curiously at his chapel-dark features. ‘What part of England do you come from?’ she asked.
