by David Rees
In 1936 Stephen Faith, a young student, goes to Spain to teach English to Pablo, the seventeen-year-old son of the Mayor of Zahara de los Membrillos, and he finds himself falling in love with his pupil’s older brother. The beginning of the Spanish Civil War, however, interrupts this idyllic period of his life; Pablo is murdered and his brother, the leader of a group of daring Anarchists, inflicts a horrible revenge. Increasingly Stephen becomes involved in events outside his control as Zahara is besieged by the Fascists; on the wrong side of the lines eventually, he is deserted by his lover, tortured, and sentenced to death. His escape from prison is the exciting climax to this immensely readable, fast-moving story of love, war, betrayal and murder. It is without doubt the finest novel David Rees has written.
Frank humanity has become Rees’s trademark.
— Patrick Gale, Gay Times
David Rees is one of the most accomplished of all gay writers. His characters are seldom extraordinary or highly intellectual people, but they are realistic and recognizable human beings that most of us can relate to.
— Out
Here is a writer trying to understand and chronicle the portion of the world he inhabits.
— Peter Burton, Gay Times
Cover design: Rupert Kirby
QUINCE
David Rees has written many novels, most of them about young people, including In the Tent, The Estuary, best-selling The Milkman’s On His Way, and now Quince. In 1978 his novel The Exeter Blitz was awarded the Carnegie Medal, and in 1980 he was the winner of The Other Award for his historical novel, The Green Bough of Liberty. Quince is his second historical novel with a gay theme, the first being The Hunger, which is set in Ireland during the Famine, and was published in 1986 by Gay Men’s Press. Quince is set in Spain during the Civil War. The great classic work on this subject is The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas, to which David Rees is indebted for some of the background information in Quince.
QUINCE
David Rees
THIRD HOUSE (PUBLISHERS)
First published in 1988 by Third House (Publishers)
35, Brighton Road. London, N16 8EQ
Copyright © David Rees 1988
ISBN 1 870188 071
Typeset by Rapid Communications Ltd, WC1X 9NW
Printed by Billing & Sons, Ltd, Worcester
Distributed in the United Kingdom and in Western Europe by Turnaround Distribution Co-op Ltd, 27, Horsell Road, London, N51XL
Distributed in the United States of America by
Inland Book Company, 254, Bradley Street,
East Haven, Connecticut 06512, U.S.A.
and
Bookpeople, 2929, Fifth Street, Berkeley, California 94710, U.S.A.
Distributed in Australia by Wild & Woolley Pty Ltd,
16, Darghan Street, Glebe, New South Wales 2007, Australia
Distributed in New Zealand by Benton Ross (Publishers) Ltd,
Unit 2, 46, Parkway Drive, Glenfield, Auckland 9, New Zealand
Cover photo: Nigel Maudsley, from a drawing by John Minton.
Reproduced by kind permission of the owner.
All rights reserved
Passions spin the plot:
We are betrayed by what is false within.
— George Meredith, Modern Love
For Ian Watt
and Mark Roman
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
ONE
‘You surely can’t be serious?’ Professor Potts stubbed out his cigarette, and stared at the young man sitting on the other side of the fire-place. Candid blue eyes: their look just a little too eager. All students had fresh unlined faces of course, but this one, in his opinion, looked more immature than most.
‘My father’s very keen on the idea,’ Stephen said. ‘He told me my Spanish would never improve unless I went to live there for a bit.’
‘He’s right.’ Dr Potts stretched, and stifled a yawn. He had taught Stephen’s father thirty years ago; Eddie Faith was the best undergraduate of his year. Lecturer in Spanish now, at the University of Reading. ‘But doesn’t he realise this is a bad time to go to Spain? Indeed a dangerous time? Doesn’t he read the newspapers?’ Probably not, Dr Potts said to himself. Brilliant linguist Eddie might be, but he was never a man of the world.
‘You mean the political situation, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘I know there’ve been murders,’ Stephen said. ‘Terrorist bombings … left-wing gangs setting fire to churches, right-wing thugs beating up socialists. But I shan’t be in Madrid. I’ll be in the wilds of Andalucía. Nothing ever happens there.’
‘Zahara de los Membrillos, you said. Zahara of the Quince Trees. Yes, it’s a beautiful city. Things have happened there … the last great battle between the Moors and the Catholic Kings took place at Zahara. A violent battle, with the most dreadful atrocities committed by both sides.’
‘That was in 1492!’
‘And this is 1936: it couldn’t be the same now. Is that what you think?’
‘It’s absurd, Isabella and Ferdinand talking about “The Reconquest.” The Kingdom of Granada was never theirs in the first place.’
Dr Potts was mildly surprised; Stephen had not shown any feeling for Spanish history before. He was not the best undergraduate of his year. ‘Let’s not get ourselves side-tracked into the labyrinths of the Golden Age,’ he said. ‘Absorbing though they may be. The point is what is happening now. This friend of your father’s you’re going to stay with―’
‘Señor Badajoz suggested I might tutor his youngest son in English. Pablo is seventeen, and studying for university entrance.’
‘How long will you be there?’
‘The whole vacation. I’ll be back the first week in October.’
‘Hmm. This is the point at issue!’ Dr Potts leaned forward and shook a finger. ‘Will you be back by then?’
‘What do you mean?’
The old professor stood up and walked across the room. He closed the French doors. It had been a fine sunny day, but it was not yet the end of April, and the evening was cool. He gazed for a moment across the lawn to Clare Bridge. If the weather turned hot, the Cam would soon be a forest of poles wielded by students showing off their punting abilities to their girlfriends instead of revising for the Tripos. He frowned. A May heatwave often meant a good student achieving a two one instead of the expected first. Not that this would apply to Stephen who, he was sure, could only scrape a third in a month of torrential storms.
‘Señor Badajoz Sousa is Zahara’s mayor, you say.’
‘Yes.’
It was Stephen’s turn to be surprised, though, he said to himself, he shouldn’t have been. Old Potts’s mind had a habit of wandering off course, a question or a statement frequently bearing little or no relation to a previous comment. Two years ago, before he went up, Eddie Faith had said, ‘I was taught by a dithering old ass called Potts. At least you’ll be spared him as your supervisor. He must be dead long since!’ But Stephen had found Professor Potts very much alive and in robust good health, nearly eighty though he was.
‘A socialist?’ Dr Potts asked. ‘Who won in last February’s elections?’
‘I’ve no idea. Is it important?’
The professor kneeled by the fire and put a match to it. His bedmaker, Mrs Woollard, had laid it as perfectly as she had done every cold morning for the past forty years; one match and it blazed. It never smouldered, never needed a puff of the bellows. Other dons, envious of her skills, had from time to time tried to woo her away, but she’d always
remained loyal to the fellows on L staircase; Dr Potts, the Dean, Mr Wilson, and the ancient Professor of Physics, Dr Prendergast, who was ninety-one and extremely rheumatic. Time he was translated to Higher Things, Dr Potts said to himself. They hadn’t spoken for thirty years: some quarrel the cause of which had been long forgotten. Like Spanish history, he thought. He wanted to move into Prendergast’s rooms when the old boy kicked the bucket. They had a better view than his of the Backs. ‘You see this fire?’ he said. ‘How well it flares up?’
‘Yes,’ Stephen replied, rather irritably. Was the old fool going completely gaga? He looked at his watch: the Anchor would be open by now, and he needed a drink. Everyone always needed a drink after supervisions with dry, dusty Potts.
‘Don’t you take that tone with me!’ The professor peered at him, then vigorously jabbed at the glowing wood with a pair of tongs. ‘This fire is like Spain is now. One spark and the whole bang shoot goes up in flames.’
Uncharacteristically melodramatic, Stephen thought. ‘Because of … a few burned-out convents? A member of parliament dying in suspicious circumstances?’
‘No, not because of that! They’re merely symptoms! Because of three centuries of disordered history! The Catholics hounding the liberals, the landowners hounding the peasants, the army hounding the politicians, and should it be a monarchy or a republic? If a monarchy, there are two sets of ultra-conservative claimants. If a republic, there are a thousand and one political parties ready to slit each other’s throats. What kind of a Spain does a Spaniard want? Every Spaniard has a different answer.’
‘This has nothing to do with me teaching Pablo Badajoz the rudiments of English.’
‘Let’s have a sherry. Jerez, I should say.’
Stephen was not surprised this time: absolutely amazed would be nearer the truth. Dr Potts had never been known to offer any undergraduate a drink. He managed to recover his wits and mutter a polite ‘Thank you.’
‘Vino fino. Very dry.’ It was. They sipped for a moment in silence. ‘I don’t think you should go,’ the professor went on, eventually. ‘I can’t stop you, of course; what you do in the long vac is your own affair. But … my advice is: don’t.’
‘Why?’
‘There’ll be a coup. Then a civil war.’
Stephen was incredulous. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’ There was no sarcasm in Dr Potts’s voice. ‘From the left or the right … I don’t know. An army take-over, and the generals try to install a military junta? Or the anarchists start a people’s revolution? Whichever … the Government is too weak to suppress it.’
‘Azaña―’
‘The strong man of the Republic, you’re going to tell me. Pious cliché! President Azaña is one of the most interesting writers of prose modern Spain has produced, but as a political leader he’s an incompetent old windbag.’
‘My father seems to think I’ll be all right,’ Stephen said.
The professor finished his sherry. Stephen finished his too, and stood up, ‘I wish you the best of luck,’ Dr Potts said, ‘When do you leave?’
‘June the ninth.’
‘I hope you get back before the bombs explode. I hope you aren’t caught out there in September, unable to get back at all. The college authorities would feel a great deal of displeasure.’
‘Yes. I suppose they would. But don’t worry about me … nothing is going to happen. Except for my Spanish being more fluent.’
When Stephen had left, Dr Potts went over to the window again. No civil war had ever disturbed the greenness of that lawn; would ever, he thought, disturb it. Zahara de los Membrillos in high summer: not a blade of green. Parched vegetation, dust, smells, flies. Well… the young man would find out. He watched a group of college hearties, swathed in scarves, kicking aimlessly at a stone and guffawing at some silly joke. The young knew nothing, he said to himself. They were only interested in alcohol and sex. And despite that interest, their knowledge of those subjects was about as inadequate as their knowledge of the work required for their degrees.
He drew the curtains.
At the same time the professor was shutting out the chill of an English evening, a meeting was taking place - also with sherry - in the mayor’s office at the Casa del Pueblo in Zahara. The weather was decidedly more alluring; the police chief and the mayor himself were in shirt-sleeves. The third man present, the Bishop of Zahara, was not allowed such luxuries; his uniform did not vary from one day to the next, however hot or cold the weather might be. The sun was shining. On the balconies geraniums were in bloom.
An amicable meeting anywhere else in Spain, at this time, between a socialist mayor (Dr Potts’s surmise was correct), a bishop, and a police chief, would have been almost impossible. The Church considered it a mortal sin to vote for a liberal, let alone a socialist; even reading a liberal newspaper ―The Stock Exchange News excepted ― was thought likely to damn the offender to the Everlasting Bonfire. As for the policeman, he was a supporter of the right-wing Falange, who looked on any form of democracy with contempt. But Bishop Tomás Guzmán Díaz, Mayor José Badajoz Sousa, and Chief of Police Miguel Goicoechea Cañal had all been at school together. They were the same age ― fifty; had been in the same class as kids.
The mayor was a handsome man: dark-skinned, black-eyed, with prominent cheek-bones. Moorish blood ran in his veins. He had a shock of iron grey hair, a neat beard and moustache. Women found him attractive: their votes had helped him to his victory in the February elections. His sex appeal, however, was not a problem for him ― he was happily married and faithful to his wife. A printer by trade, he had reached his present position by a traditional path, the socialist trade union, and by marriage to a rich woman. His father, old now and toothless, was a peasant who lived in Rojo de la Frontera, a small whitewashed pueblo five miles from the city. Dad was immensely proud of his son’s achievement (indeed it was, considering the almost static nature of Spanish society, a dizzying climb); José lived in a grand town house built round a central courtyard with a fountain and one of Zahara’s few remaining quince trees. The windows at the back had a spectacular view of the city and the surrounding countryside. But he did not employ any servants; it would have been against his principles to do so. This was Dad’s only disappointment. His somewhat tortuous thinking led him to believe that if his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren were looked after by three or four maids it would represent the ultimate triumph of the Left.
José‘s concerns as mayor were with drains, refuse disposal, improving the roads, and encouraging tourism, the latter a difficult job: for although Zahara had good rail links with Jaén and Granada, and possessed some interesting antiquities, the political climate of 1936 was not encouraging to foreign travellers. His principal success was in sanitation ― he had instituted an efficient service for collecting garbage, which had in a few months made the city’s streets and back alleys some of the cleanest in Spain. He was not boastful about this small step towards dragging Zahara into the twentieth century, nor did he underestimate the tasks that lay ahead of him, but he had his vanities. Though women did not perturb him, he was proud of his looks, his physical fitness; it amused his children to find him staring at himself in a mirror, flexing his biceps or combing straight a recalcitrant hair in his moustache. He was a grave, serious man, though not without a sense of humour. Education was his priority with his four children; that was the route to further success in life. Isabella and Carlos presented no problem - they were language students, at the moment in Paris, and they would go on during the summer to university courses in Germany ― but he had given up the struggle as hopeless with his eldest son, Pedro. Pedro was twenty-four and lived away from home, above the garage where he worked as a mechanic; he was, in his father’s opinion, too much preoccupied with girls, wine, and swaggering round the city in the company of hot-headed, unstable young men. In fact, José had got one thing wrong: Pedro’s sexual desires were for other males. Pablo, the youngest, was also beginning to be a problem. Though
a more docile, less rebellious person than his oldest brother, he was lazy; wasting his talents, José felt, as he had a good academic mind. Wasting one’s talents made the mayor quick-tempered. He was looking forward to the visit of this young Englishman he’d never met, the son of his old friend who’d made such a good career for himself. That would sort Pablo out.
Chief of Police Miguel Goicoechea was a very different kind of man. He had not kept himself as trim as the mayor had done; he was fat ― beer-drinking had been his ruin ― and listless. Sitting was his favourite occupation, whether it was behind his office desk where he shuffled documents, indolently stamping them with permission granted or permission not granted, or in a café, or on a settee at home during the hours of the siesta. Like José, he was of humble origins and had made good, though this had led him to flirt with the politics of the extreme right rather than the left: the inept governments of the Republic exasperated him. A strong, centralised Spain was in his view what was required, to be achieved, if other methods failed, by stern dictatorship. He was not, however, by nature inclined to violence. It wasn’t, fortunately, necessary in his job: there was little crime in Zahara. Though Miguel said, occasionally, of a burglar, a habitual drunkard, or a man arrested in a brawl, ‘He ought to be shot,’ or ‘Why don’t we flog him?’ he didn’t mean it; it was more like the Pavlovian reply ‘I’m fine, thank you’ ― to the question ‘How are you?’ that an acquaintance asks in the street. There had been only one murder in Zahara that year, the result of a domestic feud of such complexity that the killer was given the benefit of the doubt and jailed instead of being garrotted. Miguel was relieved. He hated executions.
