Quince

by David Rees

  He felt he’d become an adult in prison. He’d learned the dangers and limitations of love - amar es muy peligroso, he said to himself, as siempre peligroso. He was no longer naive: he did not think now that people could be trusted until proved otherwise. And being close to the war but not involved in it wasn’t a lark; being British no guarantee of immunity from persecution or death. He’d become wary and cynical. He began to realise that most men were utterly selfish, that civilized rules and moral considerations were wafer-thin veneers. It was a matter of luck, he supposed, to find the people you met were decent ― or shits. His duty, if he ever got out of jail, was to himself: to ensure his own survival by not venturing into situations where survival was a question mark. To learn to detect the shits. He should use the abilities he had ―brain, feelings, body ― to benefit himself. Everyone else did, and if he did not he’d be trampled down.

  The good times past, however, often filled his mind: Zahara’s tower, the road to Grazalema, the evening of talk and plum brandy at Don Miguel’s, the symphony concert at the mosque, Pablo’s joyful discovery of himself as a sexual being, the fountain and the quince tree at the Casa Badajoz. The ‘honeymoon,’ particularly the day at Vejer and Trafalgar, preoccupied him most, though he asked himself if it had really happened: wasn’t it maybe a dream, an imaginary figment of an unlikely Eden?

  At Cape Trafalgar they sunbathed on a beach so deserted they took off all their clothes. A warm wind brushed their skins. They marvelled at physical difference, the lack of similarity between their bodies; why was Pedro so hairy ― a bathmat from the throat downwards ― Stephen so smooth? Why was Pedro not circumcised and Stephen was? Why should Pedro have bigger bones bigger muscles; Stephen’s hair be so blond?

  The day was a mosaic of inconsequential little acts that together made an extraordinarily harmonious whole.

  ‘What foods do you dislike most?’ Stephen asked. ‘I hate cabbage!’

  ‘Stewed blackcurrants.’

  ‘That’s an odd thing to dislike.’ He dug aimlessly in the sand, and uncovered a scallop shell.

  ‘I can eat blackcurrants raw or cooked in a pie. But stewed … ugh! Maybe it’s connected with some nasty childhood experience I don’t remember.’

  ‘You have a mole. Just above your left hip.’

  Pedro complained when they were making love of sand in his foreskin; Stephen, pressed into the ground had sand in his ears, his eyes, his belly button, his crotch. Their favourite position ― Pedro’s thighs gripping his, Pedro deep in him, slowly, gently nearing climax; Pedro’s hand knowing exactly when Stephen was almost beyond control: Pedro could always make Stephen come at the same split second he came himself.

  He gave Pedro the shell. In the afternoon he stood against an olive tree and Pedro put five olives in his mouth, kissed him and sucked the olives into his own mouth. Then he pushed them gently back into Stephen’s. The sunlight through the leaves made dappled patterns on their faces.

  ‘Look! I’ve found a toad!’ He held it up for Stephen to see. ‘Amazing … it’s a perfect, alive thing.’

  ‘But limited.’

  ‘Not in its toadness.’ He was humble. Reverential.

  As they held hands at the corner of a lane an inquisitive goat stared at them, then shook its head in a friendly fashion, and scratched its hide with its rear left hoof. Or was it the right hoof? Stephen couldn’t recall. The right hoof, probably. ‘Does the goat see me as I see the goat?’ Pedro asked.

  ‘Cabrón, goat. Cabrón, bastard. Are the words connected in some way? It was thought by the medievals that goats and bastards were very lecherous.’

  ‘I know nothing about language,’ Pedro said. He tickled the goat behind its horns. ‘Has anyone told you that you have beautiful eyes?’

  ‘Frequently. They’re my greatest asset. Or that you have beautiful teeth?’

  He ran his forefinger along them; Pedro said, as he nibbled it, ‘But I was talking to the goat.’

  In Vejer de la Frontera, watching the paseo ― afternoon strollers looking or being looked at - Pedro said, ‘Would you like to dress up in women’s clothes?’

  ‘Certainly not! I’m a man.’

  ‘I see you in a flamboyant nineteenth-century dress, with jewellery and rings … I’d wear an officer’s uniform of the period … a brigadier-general’s … we’d go to a grand ball and dance the night away.’

  It’s a romantic idea.’ Stephen laughed, ‘Yes… I might like that. I’d do that.’

  ‘When the war’s over.’

  In a café at Vejer they drank some excellent valdepeñas, unusual in Franco’s Spain - the vineyards were in the Republic. ‘What’s the most awful thing you’ve ever done?’ Stephen asked.

  Pedro’s face clouded. ‘I’ve killed two or three hundred men,’ he said. ‘And removed Miguel’s balls. But I don’t think that’s so very bad … no. When I was a kid, I did some dreadful things. I bullied a little boy and made him give me his pocket money. That was bad. And I once squeezed a tiny day-old chick to death.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to see if its innards would come out at both ends.’

  ‘How revolting!’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me … I got caught stealing from a shop. I was six at the time. I blamed another boy, and he got into quite serious trouble over it. And I didn’t own up.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound so very awful.’

  ‘Did its innards come out at both ends?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Their arms touched, accidentally. ‘See what you do to me? I’ve got a hard on.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Pedro said, ‘that we can do about it in here?

  ‘Sometimes I only have to look at you and it’s upright.’

  A woman in the street read their palms. They would have long, healthy lives, she told them, and soon they’d meet beautiful girls ― perhaps before the war ended ―and marry them: Pedro would have daughters, Stephen sons. ‘But we love each other,’ Stephen said. ‘So how can it be? We’re man and wife already.’

  The woman thought this a huge joke, and gave him a carnation.

  ‘She looks like somebody I knew once.’ Pedro said when they were out of earshot, ‘She had a grocery store in Zahara, in the Calle Salchicha, I was fourteen … I went in there one night to steal a cigarette. She saw me … but instead of chasing me out, she took me into the back room and showed me her tits. I sucked them and she played with my cock. I came in about ten seconds … it shot for yards in those days!’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Yes. It was my first time with another human being. She gave me two cigarettes, and told me not to breathe a word to anybody. But to come back the following night.”

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing like that happened to me when I was fourteen!’

  ‘It’s not the same in England with teenagers? She did it for Pablo too … when he was twelve! I was shocked.’

  ‘Did he come, at that age?’

  ‘So he said. I could at twelve … so why not my brother?’

  Stephen put the carnation behind his right ear, and hummed a tune from La Bohème. O soave fanciulla … They walked down the steep hill into the valley, to the spot where they’d left their bicycles. Pedro picked some wild flowers and put them, too, behind Stephen’s ear. An old woman walking along the road gazed at them in astonishment. ‘I’d like to kiss you,’ Stephen said. ‘But I’d better not… with her looking at us.’

  ‘I’m glad you told the palm-reading abuela … I feel proud.’

  ‘Man and wife?’

  ‘Yes. We are.’

  What sentimental, stupid crap all that was, Stephen said to himself. Like the dialogue ― give or take the sexual bits ― from some trashy story in a women’s magazine!

  More than a year had passed since his arrest. It was January 1939; the end of the war could not be far away, and the wrong side was winning. The Nationalists were over-running Catalonia, and
finding ― the world was amazed ― virtually no resistance. The Catalans were defeatist, weary, and demoralised. Barcelona, destroyed

  from within by the revolutions that had plagued it since 1936, surrendered without a fuss. Franco was advancing to the French frontier almost unopposed, preceded by thousands of terrified refugees escaping into France.

  The jailer who had burned Pedro’s letter came to the cell one morning. ‘You’re wanted,’ he said to Stephen, He was grinning unpleasantly.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You’ll find out. Turn round.’ He tied Stephen’s hands behind his back with some wire.

  ‘I think … this is it.’ Stephen said to his cell-mates. ‘No,’ Squint-eye answered. ‘They would call your name out from a list.’

  ‘You’ll be back in a minute,’ One-arm said. ‘Nevertheless … good luck.’

  They both embraced him. Stephen, escorted down several flights of stairs to a cellar, felt so weak in the legs he was afraid he would piss in his trousers. ‘Wait here.’ the jailer said, and locked him in. It was a perfect place for an execution: he remembered the Tsar and his family in the cellar at Ekaterinburg. There were no windows, and just one naked light bulb. The room was warm; there was a huge boiler and piles of coal. Why did the heat never penetrate to the cells, he wondered.

  Perfect place it might be, but men were not usually shot down here. They were taken out into the yard: he heard the bullets many times, the thump of the corpse as it hit the ground. So why? Dear God! They’re not going to feed me, alive, into the boiler! No! No, no, no!!

  The door was unlocked and the jailer reappeared ― not with the assassin Stephen expected, but a young man in a smart suit and tie. He was holding a sheaf of papers, and spoke in English. Was English! ‘Does this cur understand our lingo?’ he asked, indicating the jailer.

  ‘No,’ Stephen said.

  ‘You’re Stephen Faith?*

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen carefully … I’m Guy Spellman and I work at the British Consulate… How do you do? Don’t react too strongly to what I have to say … it’s important you don’t look overjoyed; the cur might be suspicious. We’re getting you out. Now.’

  ‘What!?

  ‘I said don’t look overjoyed! You’ve probably never realised it, but a great many people have been pulling a great many strings on your behalf. The Foreign Office in London has been aware of your plight … oh, for nearly a year.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A Spaniard living in France’ ― he looked at his papers ― ‘informed our embassy in Paris. A Señor Badajoz.’ The jailer, recognizing the name, looked interested for a moment, but his expression of indifference soon returned. ‘Paris duly told London. H.M.G., as I’m sure you know, maintains a public attitude of strict neutrality to the Spanish war, so the Foreign Office wouldn’t do anything, officially, to help you … but it did agree to tell our consul here that it would turn a blind eye to unofficial ways we might think of for getting you out. We had to invent a yarn the Cádiz authorities would believe. This is it: you’re wanted for murder―

  ‘Murder!’

  ‘Don’t worry, it isn’t true! The British courts, we said, want you extradited. Forging extradition papers that looked convincing took some time. And they were useless anyway, as we don’t have an extradition treaty with the Nats. The mayor of Cádiz, however … perhaps he was tired of our constant complaints on your behalf … finally relented. It would be one less prisoner to feed, he said. It cost me ―personally ― a large case of very good sherry. The mayor is a great sherry aficionado.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Now don’t take fright. I’m going to march you out of here at gun-point. Do exactly what I tell you.’ He pointed a pistol at Stephen.

  Was this a trick? Another betrayal? Which member of the Badajoz family had informed the British Embassy in France? José? But José could only know Stephen was a prisoner in fascist Spain if Pedro had told him. So that was … something.

  It wasn’t a trick. Ten minutes later Stephen was in a car, his hands unbound. He was driven to the home of the British consul.

  He had a bed to sleep in. What luxury, what comfort! A mattress, sheets, blankets, pillows! It seemed so unbelievably soft he feared it would keep him awake, but he slept profoundly, ten hours a night, and without dreams. There was hot water, of course; he could bath, and he was given new clothes ― bought for him from consulate funds by the tireless, generous Guy Spellman. He didn’t throw his old prison rags away, however, and after they had been washed he would wear them when he was alone in his room ― a vest that had once been white and was now full of holes, and a pair of cotton trousers, frayed at the hems and knees, and torn across the bum. Both garments were splashed with stains ― blood mostly ― no laundering would ever remove. But he felt curiously comfortable in them, whereas the new clothes ― ordinary shirts, a jacket trousers, shoes ― were stiff, and itched. Another relic he insisted on maintaining was his cropped hair; for ever after he had it shorn almost down to the skull. Nor did he at any time eat in the way he had once done; for the rest of his life he was thin as a shadow. He always retained an air of having just been let out of a cell, his gauntness all the more marked as during his year in jail he had grown two inches.

  He was allowed to use the consulate’s telephone, and his first call was to his parents. He had to be careful: the operator might be listening and report what he said to the authorities ― he was supposed to be wanted in Britain on a murder charge. It was a long, emotional conversation: they had known from the Foreign Office what had happened to him, and their relief at hearing his voice ― cheerful, well, and apparently normal ― was immense. Their only disappointment was that he didn’t know when, or how, he would be able to leave Spain. His second call was a brief one, to Professor Potts. The old man was ill: ‘I think I’m dying,’ he said. ‘So get here soon. I want to know every detail… has Franco won the war?’

  ‘Nearly.’

  He then contacted Directory Enquiries in Paris: was anyone listed under the name of Badajoz, Christian name José or Pedro?

  There wasn’t.

  These calls had not been easy to make. Though the telephone system still allowed both sides in the conflict to speak to each other, the international exchange was in Madrid. Madrid refused to connect the fascists with their friends in other countries; Stephen’s calls had been routed through Gibraltar.

  He wanted to leave as soon as possible; he’d go on any boat, he said to Guy Spellman. Pedro’s optimistic belief that British merchant ships, laden with sherry, were sailing out of Cadiz as frequently as before the war was absurd, Guy said; and obviously a Spanish ship was out of the question. The smuggling of people from one zone to the other has virtually stopped,’ he said. ‘But there could still be the odd boat slipping out on a dark night for Almería. Would you go back to the Republic?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  How would you get out of it? You can’t just leap on a train these days and find yourself whisked off to Perpignan.’

  ‘I know. But French boats dock in Republican ports.’

  ‘And they run the risk of being bombed by German or Italian aircraft helping Franco.’

  ‘Well… it’s a risk I’ll take.’

  ‘If you ever see England again, you’ll have a few stories for a dinner party.’ Stephen had told Guy about everything that had happened to him. To the consul ― a discreet, upper-class diplomat ― he had given an expurgated version. Guy had perhaps passed on some of the left-out details, for the attitude to Stephen of both the consul and his wife was chilly, indeed frosty; though, Stephen thought, this could be because they were Franco sympathisers, and only duty or good manners allowed them to give house-room to an intimate friend of Red Pedro Badajoz. He hardly ever saw them. He was asked just once to share their dinner table ― he usually ate with Guy, or alone in his room. ‘You could write a book about it.’ Guy said.

  ‘I probably will.’ Stephen answered.

  Guy
burst out laughing. ‘You’ll need a title that sells. True Confessions of the Lynx’s Lover. Hey! That’s not had! Or … A Spanish Saga: Anarchism in Bed.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What do you want to do with your life?’

  ‘I don’t know … but it may be thrust on me. There’ll be a European war soon; that’s obvious. My knowledge of Spain and my ability to speak the language… well, it could be useful… as a war correspondent, perhaps.’

  ‘Only if Spain gets dragged into it.’

  ‘That is precisely what Dr Negrín is hoping.’

  ‘Franco will win before the other business starts.’ Guy said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. He owes Hitler and Mussolini colossal debts.’

  ‘He’s much too wily to dash into helping them.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Stephen said.

  A month passed. The Republic still controlled two fifths of Spain, and Franco did not appear to be in any hurry to attack it. A nervous truce reigned all along the front; every day the report was sin novedad. Stephen, in the consul’s house, enjoyed luxuries which a few weeks ago he had hardly dared to imagine, but he wasn’t free: or free only in a limited sense. He could walk in the garden, but he couldn’t go into the city. He spent a lot of time in the garden; there were flowers to look at and a great many trees, and though it was February it wasn’t cold. Because he had thought he might never experience such things again, he found enormous pleasure in staring at daffodils, oleanders, clematis, palms. Some days were damp and blustery, with mist driving in from the sea. It was good just to be outside, allowing the rain to soak him, and breathing in lungfuls of fresh Atlantic air.

  On the first of March Guy came to him with news. ‘Azaña has resigned from the Presidency.’ he said. ‘But the war goes on. There’s a boat.’