Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  Of course he came up then, as before, against the question of money. About this one private circumstance of hers, her situation forced the Condesa into an unwonted and reluctant openness. Her own and most of her husband’s estates were in Republican Spain, and therefore brought in nothing any more; she knew nothing of what had happened to his investments. Her sole source of income at the moment, what produced that scanty store of pesetas in the little despatch case behind the stove was a small allowance brought to her once a month by her dead brother’s old steward—acting, he said, on his master’s orders. Where the money came from she had no idea. But little as it was, it was regular, and it was all she had. She said it was sufficient. But the new room was rather more costly than the old—and since she would have to pay the landlord herself, James did not dare in this instance to lie about the price. He told her what it was, and urged her for the child’s sake, at least, to let him pay the difference. On that occasion he went, by appointment, quite late at night, when the little Pilar was already asleep on the palliasse. The vigorous argument which ensued was conducted in whispers, by candlelight. It was the most direct human contact he had yet had with her; whispering, he fought down her reluctance, fairly scolded her. “You are letting your pride, your silly pride, stand in the way of her health,” he hissed, pointing to the bed on the floor in the corner. “I don’t understand you. It is wrong. Why should you care who pays, so long as she is in better conditions? I am nothing, I am someone you barely know—but what does that matter, so long as she has her chance?” She bowed her beautiful head at this attack, the tears standing in her eyes.

  “You are right—I agree. It is that I am not accustomed—” her whisper trailed away into silence.

  “Of course you’re not,” he whispered back, more gently; “we’re none of us accustomed to war. Spain is upside-down.” He had been bending towards her; he straightened up and murmured briskly—“That’s settled, then; and I shall come with the car for you on Tuesday, at eight.”

  Chapter Two

  The Far Side—Madrid

  The new room was a great improvement on the old. Milcom, through his odd friends and by devious means had produced a second bed complete with bedstead, a largish rug, and even a small arm-chair, and had fixed a shelf and a row of coat-and-hat pegs, acquired from his friend down by the Manzanares, on the wall; the same friend had furnished an old packing-case to stand by the stove and hold the wood. When it was all arranged it looked quite homely and pleasant; James, who had not only transported the Condesa’s effects from her old abode, but had helped to install them, looked round him with a certain satisfaction. As for Pilar, she moved delicately about with a face of delight, examining everything—sat quietly in the arm-chair, patted the pillows on the new bed, stroked the rug with the toe of her little shoe, all without a sound; only when Milcom left she did what she had never done before—after dropping her little curtsey she pulled him down by the arm, put her own small arms about his neck, and gave him a kiss. James was both charmed and embarrassed; when he raised his head he saw that the Condesa was watching them with an expression that was at once sweet and inscrutable.

  The landlord of this new abode was for some reason in Milcom’s pocket, so that it was no longer necessary for him to restrict his visits to the hours after nightfall; indeed occasionally they all went for a walk together, he and the Condesa and Pilar, and took coffee or a meal at a restaurant—when he was aware, with a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment, of the very domestic picture which the three of them presented. He continued to bring food, and to produce and saw up wood; both he and the Condesa settled down more and more into a very simple acceptance of this odd, limited relationship—even into a sort of dependence on it. He realised that he was the only support, and the nearest thing to a friend that she had in the strange hostile city, since her brother’s death. But she preserved her delicate remoteness; he still knew nothing about her but what he saw: her beauty, her love for the child, her social perfection—which persisted even in a single room, and ruled it as a great hostess rules a salon. All that, and her extraordinary fortitude. He recognised that as a very Spanish thing in her; what the crude sentimental Anglo-Saxons have christened “Spanish pride” is really fortitude, an amazing detachment from material circumstances, a sort of spiritual fortification against any practical humiliations of poverty or hunger or inconvenience. How little he knew of her!—that was one of the constant burdens of his thought; he had no idea, even, if she ever speculated about him as he, so constantly, did about her—whether she had any curiosity as to what manner of man he was. For, infected perhaps by her withdrawnness, he told her nothing of himself, of his experience, save what was of international, of European import—and little enough of that.

  At the end of February a fresh offensive broke out in the mountains to the North-East of Madrid, and James had to go and cover it. He was surprised to find how much it bothered him to leave her and the child alone. He did everything he could think of for their well-being; he filled the box by the stove with wood, and made a complicated arrangement with the landlord and the man in the back-yard to maintain the supply; he brought a quantity of condensed milk and other tinned foods, and fixed up something about eggs and butter with another individual who was for some reason in his debt.

  “I hope you’ll be all right,” he said rather nervously to the Condesa at parting—“I ought to be back in ten days; a fortnight at the outside.”

  She smiled at him—her wonderful smile that made her lovely face still lovelier, as a sudden burst of sunshine irradiates a landscape already classical, already faultless, with astonishing magic.

  “I am sure we shall be all right,” she said; “you have been so good to us—you have thought of everything.”

  But the little Pilar, for once, did an odd thing—lost her tiny, demure, unnatural self-control. She ran to Milcom, where he sat in the upright chair, and fairly flung herself on him, her little face all distraught.

  “Oh, do not go!” she cried, while unwonted tears, tears he had never seen, poured down her small cheeks. “Oh, please do not leave us! Some evil thing will happen if you do. I feel it! Oh, do not! Do not go! Remain, remain!” And when her mother, disturbed by this astonishing exhibition, rose and tried to calm, to remove her, her childish voice rose to a minute scream.

  “No! I am right. He should stay! Oh Meelcomm, please stay!”

  He couldn’t stay, of course. He kissed, caressed, tried to console the funny mature adorable little thing, but in the end he had to depart, leaving her in her mother’s hands. This small episode made a most painful impression on Milcom. All through the cold, dismal, snowy campaign Pilar’s face and voice, and little clinging claw-like hands were with him, and her unconsolable sobs, and her presentiment of evil; he worried; his nights, short and uncomfortable anyhow, were broken and troubled by dreams of her, of them; his days, busy, hurried, and dangerous, were nevertheless filled with anxiety about those two lonely creatures, friendless ghosts in a city of ghosts, of forlorn and half-starved women—Madrid.

  He was kept away longer than he expected, and on his return went at once to the cellar. To facilitate his bringing in wood and other supplies, Milcom had actually, with the Condesa’s concurrence, got a duplicate key; he knocked on the door first, and getting no reply, let himself in. It was late, and he was a little surprised that they should still be out; usually Raquel brought the child in early, because she thought the air towards sunset was bad for that cough. It was chilly in the room, and getting dark—the fire was nearly out; James stoked up the stove, but did not turn on the light; he sat waiting, as the twilight deepened. At first he was quite content; glad to be there again, directly happy in the expectation of seeing the pair of them—at any moment now they would come, he would hear their voices outside. Pilar’s little high voice and her mother’s soft but very penetrating and resonant one, with that indefinable male quality that there is in the voices of many Spanish women—and then they would walk in. He pictu
red their surprise at finding him; Raquel would either smile that brilliant smile, or put on her enigmatic face that so intrigued and charmed him; and Pilar—he was not sure what Pilar would do; run to him confidently, almost certainly, and perhaps give him the salute of her arms round his neck, as she had given him at parting.

  But they didn’t come. It grew darker and darker; James got first impatient, then restless; he turned on the light, and looked at his watch. What could they be doing? Now he became anxious; something must be wrong; they were never as late as this. He got up and moved about, studying the room, now that the light was on, noting all the familiar objects, as if to reassure himself. Something was missing—at first he was not sure what. Oh yes—Pilar’s little cap hanging on the wall. But she would be wearing that anyway, if she was out. He moved along the row of pegs, lightly touching the garments that hung there, in an unshielded intimacy that always half-touched, half-embarrassed him. But where was Pilar’s other dress, the tidier one that she wore on Sundays? And—he turned to the table—where was her little knitting, that usually lay there below the brown winter vase of flowers, when it was not in her small hands? It was not there. He went to feel under the pillow on the bed of his providing, the one with the bedstead, in which the child slept—sometimes she tucked it away there. No—not there either; but as he replaced the faded quilt he noticed that the pillow had no pillow-case on it. A horrible anxiety, that turned him physically cold, overtook James; he pulled the quilt down, exposing the thin blanket. No sheet either. But what was this? Under the quilt was the hem of a little tartan woollen dress, Pilar’s day dress—neatly folded. As panic seized him, he heard the click of a key in the lock; he turned, still holding the edge of the quilt in his hand, as the door opened and the Condesa came in. She was alone.

  They stood looking at one another—then she shut the door, and came a couple of steps into the room.

  “Yes,” she said, looking at his hand which held the quilt. “Yes.”

  “Oh, God!” Milcom said. He dropped the quilt, and moved towards her; then, as if he felt her somehow unapproachable he turned aside and sat down, unthinkingly, in the arm-chair. For a moment he said nothing, did not even look at her—then, with an effort, he raised his head.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She sat down, slowly, in the upright chair, and pulled the shawl off her head before she spoke; she looked extraordinarily tired.

  “It was a pneumonia,” she said. There was very little tone in her voice. “It began two days after you left—indeed I have thought since that perhaps she was already ill that day, when she behaved so strangely with you.”

  “The poor little thing!” James said. “In a way, you know, I loved it, her running to me like that.” He was taken quite off his guard by all this. “Oh, God!” he said again, and sank his head in his hands. After a moment or two he raised it and said—“Go on.”

  “There is nothing to tell,” she said, still in that voice without tone. “She was so small, and so thin, she just had not enough strength. With a pneumonia, it is all a question of strength, and hers was insufficient. She had had the cough so long.”

  “Did you have a doctor?” James asked.

  “Yes. I sent a letter to Los Quaqueros, and the doctor came, a lady, a wonderful woman. And she gave her a piqure, and they sent medicines, and did everything that could be done—but she had not enough strength.”

  “Oh, God!” he said, for the third time. “No wonder I was worried.”

  “Were you worried?” she asked, looking faintly surprised.

  “Frightfully. The whole time. I dreamt about her. I couldn’t get it out of my head—how she had begged me not to go. But I had to go,” he said, looking at her almost pleadingly.

  “Of course you had to go,” she answered quietly. They sat silent then for a time, James looking at his knees, the Condesa watching his great black head and lined gloomy face. He was thinking what this meant to her, the loss of hourly sweet companionship, of occupation, of a reason for living; and of her complete and utter aloneness, now—with that bad hat for a husband, and anyhow in prison—and of how little he, James, could do for her; and of how much he wanted to do. What she was thinking, her face when at last he looked again at her gave no sign.

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked.

  “Stay here, I imagine. What else can I do?”

  What indeed? There was nothing she could do, and nowhere that she could easily go—and no one, save him, James, and the old steward whom she could even call friend, to whom she could turn for anything. It all came in on him, her utter desolation, and her exhausted uncomplaining quiet in the face of it. And it was almost more than he could bear.

  She stayed on, where she was. He tried to find her another room, which would be less filled with memories, but it was not easy, and she said she didn’t want to move, in any case. The room was a sort of companion, she said once. He saw her practically every day, and went on doing for her all the things he had done before—supplying wood, eggs, cigarettes, butter occasionally. Only after the child’s death she would not accept any more tinned milk; that ought to be for children, she said. As the days lengthened and the weather grew warmer they went out more and more—took walks, ate in small restaurants in the legthening spring evenings, sitting outside on the pavement, or in tree-shaded courtyards. It remained a strange, ghostly comradeship, curiously impersonal; only her sorrow and her fortitude taught him steadily a little more of what she was—and the memory of the child, and his patient attempts to occupy and distract her, drew them closer and closer together in their isolation. Knowing almost nothing about her, he yet came to feel that he knew her very well. But he asked himself no questions as to what was happening, and where all this was taking him—ghosts in a city of ghosts do not need to concern themselves with the practical day-to-day problems which personal relationships raise in more normal circumstances. He let it all ride. There was he and there was she; she needed him, simply because she had no one else; and he was there, at her service, with a completeness of which he hardly allowed himself to be aware. So the spring deepened into the long hot arid summer, and still under the brassy sky of Madrid they walked, and ate, and talked, and built a relationship of whose strength and intensity neither was fully aware, until something happened which jeopardised the tranquil sober-hued routine of their companionship.

  On the whole the women of the Franco persuasion were quite decently treated by the Republicans; indeed the Spanish war seems to have been remarkably free from any definite persecution of women. A Franco sympathiser in Madrid had rather a harder time getting food than other women, as the Condesa had told Milcom at the outset, and it was advisable to do as she did, to stick pretty closely at home, and to remain as inconspicuous as possible to avoid the irresponsible hostility of neighbours. Normally, that was all it amounted to. But from time to time, when some plot or piece of sabotage had disturbed and frightened the city, a burst of White-hunting would occur—sometimes one would occur for no assignable reason, even.

  In the late summer following Pilar’s death such a spasm broke out. The Condesa was re-examined, threatened, harried. It was always difficult, in such circumstances, to decide in what degree of actual danger the victim stood; Milcom made all the enquiries he could, intervened on her behalf, and came to the conclusion that she was probably fairly safe. But it was also borne in on him that this time Raquel, in spite of her courage and endurance, had had all that her nerves and strength would stand; more, he suddenly realised that he himself could not stand any more of this sort of torment for her. He decided at all costs to get her out of Spain. When he told her of his decision, she said “Very well—Yes, thank you,” with a curious listlessness; she asked no questions, showed no curiosity as to where she was to go, expressed neither satisfaction nor regret. Then there began the usual dreary round of bribery, intrigue, and forged papers. Milcom’s good standing with the Republican authorities helped him in this, so did the fact that the Conde
sa had a cousin on that side in Barcelona; but it was a slow business, and it was late in September before he finally got everything in order, down to the special requisition for extra petrol for his car, and drove her off.

  At Barcelona there were fresh delays. James suffered the usual discomfort of the Englishman in Spain in such circumstances in not being sure whether these were deliberate and therefore dangerous, or merely the result of dilatoriness and incompetence. The Condesa was taken over by the cousin and remained hidden away in a small room—James stayed in a hotel, and hardly saw her till the moment when, with the cousin’s connivance, she was got onto a boat. There was an air-raid as they left the harbour; the bombs of the Savoias missed them by a matter of feet. To James’s great surprise, this seemed to upset her very much. Raids and bombardments in Madrid she had always treated with the indifferent calmness of most Spaniards; but whether it was that the strain and suspense of escape had affected her nerves, or for some other reason, she started and trembled at each explosion, and went on trembling long after the poor little steamer had lurched out to sea in safety, and was well on its way to Port Vendres. It was a rough uncomfortable trip; the accommodation was of the poorest, and Raquel was very sick. They were both completely exhausted by the time they reached port.

  Port Vendres—Portus Veneris—is the first harbour on the French side of the Spanish frontier. They put into it one afternoon early in October, when the clear bright colours of the houses which climb the dark green slopes round the harbour glowed like enamel in the rich Mediterranean sunshine. James got a car, his suitcase was stowed in the back—owing to the secrecy and other difficulties attendant on their getting away from Madrid, the Condesa had been obliged to leave all her poor possessions behind; she carried the little shabby attache-case that used to hide behind the stove in the cellar, and that was all. They drove off to Perpignan.