Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  When he came to he was lying against the railings of a garden across the road, and a good deal further up than where he had been when the bomb fell—his hat, as he presently noticed, had fallen off, and marked the spot where he had stood; the cigarette which he had been smoking lay beside it, the smoke still rising from it in the sunshine. The villa in whose doorway he had intended to shelter was gone—mortar dust was rising like smoke above the heap of rubble on the spot where it had been. James knew vaguely that he ought to do somthing—go and pull people out of the ruins, perhaps. Sitting up, he felt himself rather gingerly all over—he seemed to be sound, except for a wound in his forehead, from which the blood was beginning to trickle down into his right eye. He took out his handkerchief, folded it into a pad, and tied it over the place with his necktie. Then he raised himself cautiously to his feet. H’m—no; he wouldn’t be able to help anyone else very much—he could barely walk himself. It must have been a big one, for the blast to knock him so completely silly—and it had been very near. He began to make his way downhill, holding on by the railings; his strength would come back presently—he was familiar with the effects of blast, and the curious paralysis of all the faculties that it often produces. When he came level with the ruined villa he stopped and looked at it, and listened. He could hear no sound. A woman’s head and shoulders lay in the white dust of the roadway, with a string of cheap beads still round her neck—one arm and the trunk had gone. James, holding onto the railings, was violently sick. Meanwhile the raid was still going on—the air shook with the booming of explosions, vibrated with that moan and hum; evidently it was a bad one. From where he now stood he could see people, in ones and twos, scurrying across the road, a phenomenon which he recognised—it meant that there must be a shelter somewhere down there. He made for it as fast as he could, damning the blood which in spite of the pad kept running down into his eyes, wiping it off angrily with his right hand, while he held onto the railings with his left. There was the shelter, not one hundred yards ahead—he reached it somehow, a long slope going down into the ground. It was full to overflowing; people were standing elbow to elbow from the point where the roof began. But James, with his blood-smeared face, must have been a ghastly enough spectacle to inspire sympathy; he was drawn a few paces inside, and made to sit down with his back against the wall. Here he was promptly sick again, and then fainted for the second time.

  When he came to the raid was over, and all had left the shelter to resume their normal tasks except one old man, who offered to conduct him to a dressing-station in the town to have his head seen to. Thither they went, James leaning on the old man’s arm, glad of his support to an extent which astonished him. The dressing-station was in the cellar of a wine merchant’s establishment, and was the dirtiest thing of its kind that James had ever seen: the wounded lay on the unscrubbed bricks or propped against dusty barrels; mould-laden greenish cobwebs hung from the vaulted ceiling. However, a young Scottish doctor, assisted by a middle-aged Spanish lady and two girls, one Irish and one French, was doing a very efficient job of work; and when James’s turn came the hole in his forehead was promptly plugged with gauze, and bound up with strips of what James recognised as a torn-up bedspread—the same sort of honeycombed material as that quilt he had so hated when he spread it over Raquel in the bedroom of the hotel at Perpignan. The doctor then briefly examined him all over for further injuries, found none, announced that he was suffering from shock and loss of blood, gave him a shot if something in the arm with a hypodermic, and told him to go home and lie down. “Do you live here?” he asked.

  “No—I’m here on a trip.”

  “Sight-seeing?” asked the doctor grimly.

  “Journalist,” said James.

  “Ah—well, I suppose you can’t help yourself. What paper?”

  “Epoch.”

  To James’s amusement, at that mighty name the grimness of the young doctor’s expression relaxed a little

  “Ah—well, tell them all about it,” he said washing his hands in a tin basin held for him by the young French girl. “You do, though, I know.”

  “Tell me,” said James, an idea striking him, “who looks after the sick in the gaol, if there are any—do you?”

  “No—a Spanish doctor. Quite good, too. Why, do you know someone up there?”

  “Yes—I was there this morning. Do you know anything of a girl called Paquita?”

  “I know a lot about her,” the doctor replied, his grimness returning, while he began to dry his hands on a rough towel. “She was a spy, and one of the really good ones. It was a very smart piece of work catching her. They’ve got some sort of relation of hers in there, too—a Count something or other.”

  James was startled. “Not the Conde de Verdura?”

  “Yes, that is the name,” put in the French girl, who had emptied the basin into a bucket and was now standing waiting for the towel.

  “But he’s not a spy, surely?” James asked.

  “Not that I know of—but the girl’s a cousin or something,” the doctor said, carelessly. “Why, do you know her?”

  “No, but I rather want to see her,” James said.

  “Only the Military Governor could give you permission for that,” said the doctor, going over as he spoke to a rough table, over which hung an unshielded electric light, and beginning to examine a man who was laid on it. “And don’t go visiting any Governors to-day or to-morrow—go home and lie quiet. You’ve had a fair bump. Come back and see me in two days’ time.”

  James followed him over to the table.

  “One more question—forgive me,” he said.

  “Yes?” said the doctor without looking up, his hands busy.

  “Juan Torre de Modero—you haven’t heard anything of him down here?”

  The doctor straightened up and stared at James through his glasses.

  “Upon me soul, for the Epoch correspondent in Republican Spain, you are in with the Whites!” he said. “What on earth do you want with Torre de Modero?”

  “Only to find out where he is, for a refugee relation who worships him,” said James—he was stung by the Scotchman’s tone and. shock had taken away some of his self-control.

  “No—I have no news of him whatever. I’d tell you if I had,” the doctor said, less abruptly. “By all accounts, he’s a good man. Pity he’s on the wrong side. Now, get you home.”

  James went. He found himself wishing that he could take a cab, but cabs are at no time abundant in Almadera, except in the Plaza and down by the docks, and they had all been requisitioned by the army long since. So he set off on foot. His head was painful, and involuntarily he put up his hand to it, and met the unwonted roughness of the improvised bandage—this reminded him of the quilt for Raquel, and he decided to go back that way and take a second look at it. The streets were already full of people, going about their business again as usual: breakdown gangs were at work on the ruined and damaged houses, lorries were carting away rubble, and between them country carts were bringing in supplies, or hawking them from door to door; housewives trotted to and fro on errands, or swept up broken glass from their doorsteps with the most normal air in the world. God, they were a tough people, the Spaniards, James reflected.

  But when he got to the antiquary’s shop, it was gone. Just disappeared, like the villa up in the suburbs, outside which he had been blown down; crumpled up into a heap of rubble. The breakdown gang was already at work, setting such bits of the stock as were not smashed aside on the pavement—a woman with greying hair stood by, wringing her hands and weeping silently. James paused to look on for a moment—somehow this sudden ruin affected him much more than that of the house in which he had never stood. While he watched, two of the salvage men came out from under the ruins of a half-crushed doorway carrying a body between them, and set it down by the woman—she knelt beside it, drawing her shawl over her mouth, while her tears rained down on the dusty face. It was the shopkeeper, quite dead; his right arm had been broken, and lay bent in a horri
ble angle at his side—but the fingers were still passed through the string of a parcel done up in paper. A painful curiosity drew James across the street to the woman’s side. Yes—the paper was torn at one end, and within was the rich green gleam of watered silk, like the green of water under rocks on a thundery day. Poor wretch—how badly he had wanted that sugar! James did nothing, except to push a few notes into the woman’s shabby little bag, which lay on the ground at her side. Probably she too would have been glad of the sugar, but his head ached intolerably, he felt sick and giddy, and he had a sudden revulsion from the whole thing. Since seeing the Conde, he somehow felt less sure of his right to give Raquel bedspreads—and anyhow he could not give her one taken from the hand of a corpse. With difficulty, he struggled on towards his hotel, wondering it if too would be a heap of ruins.

  It wasn’t, strangely enough, since it was not far from the harbour; it was still standing, its shabby and rather ugly self. But just before he reached it he had one more encounter, the last of that peculiar and exhausting day. Out of a side street leading down to the docks a man emerged, heavily burdened with some uncouth load, a man whose face was vaguely familiar to James. He looked again to see who it was, wondering to meet a familiar face in Almadera, and recognised the gaoler. A huge bundle of damp teak under one arm, slivers of broken glass wrapped in rag in his other hand, he was hastening towards the prison. Exhausted as he was, the sight brought a sour grin to Milcom’s face. Evidently the Conde had used some of his sugar to good purpose. He turned into his hotel and went to bed.

  Chapter Six

  This Side—St.-Jean-de-Luz

  On a fine morning early in November, about a month after that day when Mr. Crumpaun had first driven her over to the Bridge at Irün, Rosemary Oldhead went down to the flower-market early, to get some blooms wherewith to fill those big pale-grey earthenware jars which she and her mother had bought together, standing among piles of rope and sacks of dried peas, in various small shops round the market square—shops with a clean, sour, malty smell which they both liked. It had become a habit with Rosemary to slip into the flower-market two or three mornings a week, to potter round, choose what was cheapest, and dart back to the hotel with it before her Spanish lesson at ten—it was part of the easy pleasant routine into which the Oldhead family had by now slipped, of Spanish lessons in the mornings for Rosemary, while Mrs. Oldhead did minor shoppings, washed her own and Rosemary’s jumpers and Mr. Oldhead’s socks, and generally speaking kept her family mended and tidy, and of walks or an expedition in the afternoons. They felt quite at home now in St.-Jean-de-Luz—at the English Church, and in one way and another they had got to know quite a number of the very considerable English population, who for reasons of health, finance, or education were settled in villas in and around the town, and mixed to some extent with the friendlier French residents—mostly people who came regularly to spend the winter in that soft and gentle climate. There were modest tea-parties and cocktail parties, little lunches in this hotel or in that. Mrs. Oldhead, running out to buy jam or Lux, found people to nod to now in the street, which always produces such a domesticated feeling; Mr. Oldhead could exchange views with acquaintances at the Bank and the lending library. Rosemary and her mother had theories now as to which were the most reliable of the various cleaners and stoppages, and which the cheapest shops for hairpins and toliet soap.

  Rosemary, darting out of the hotel door at 8.30 a.m., ran across as usual to the railings to look for a moment at the sea. The beach stretched away on each side of her in a long pale curve of sand; the dogs of the town were out on it, also as usual, taking their morning constitutional together—running along the water’s edge, examining bits of wood and other flotsam, and fighting amicably for any especially interesting piece; one large white sheepdog creature was digging at a huge hole in the sand, and presently the rest joined him and began barking and scuffling as to which should get into it—a sort of game of King-of-the-Castle upside down. They did this every morning, and it always made Rosemary laugh to see them; she called the absurd assemblage “the Dogs’ Club.” She laughed now, standing there with the wind whipping her cheeks to a fresh colour; then turned and headed for the market. By now she knew pretty well every street, alley, place and turning in the cramped confusing little town, where you come suddenly on squares, complete with close-clipped plane trees, no larger than a small drawing-room; and where almost all the houses still preserve their Basque characters of deep projecting eaves and chocolate-coloured shutters. She scurried down the Rue Garat, crossed the Rue Gambetta, and zigzagged through passages too narrow for a cart to pass and along quiet lanes flanked by high walls, whose overhanging trees charm the passer-by with the thought of the gardens within. In one of these she came on the bouvier, the town scavenger, standing outside a back door emptying garbage-buckets into the long cart, drawn by two oxen, from which he derived his name; he knew her by sight, smiled and wished her good-day.

  Arrived at the market, Rosemary proceeded as usual to a careful inspection of all the flower stalls; she always did this, noting the prices and the freshness of the flowers; she never bought in a hurry. The more expensive stalls were in the big glass-roofed building, and she examined these first, though she seldom bought at them; she liked the clean country smell in the market-hall, the green and whitish piles of vegetables, the baskets of eggs and neat stacks of butter and cheese, and then the blaze of colour and sudden perfume of the high banks of flowers on the wooden stands. Oh dear, they were getting expensive; carnations seventy-five centimes each! But marigolds were still there in masses, and cheap—orange and pale lemon yellow; and there were huge sheaves of cosmias, shaded from deep carmine to almost white, at a franc the botte; and red, yellow, bronze and white chrysanthemums, in bottes and in pots. She went out, and pottered among the outside stalls; here she found those little brick-red carnations, carelessly grown, all bushy and full of buds—they were quite cheap. She bought some of these to smell nice in a small vase, and masses of marigolds and cosmias to go in the larger ones. Fumbling in her purse for her money, the flowers tucked into the crook of both elbows, she heard herself addressed in English—“Good morning, Miss Oldhead.”

  She looked up from her purse and saw the Condesa.

  “Oh, good morning. I can’t shake hands!” she said, smiling.

  The Condesa smiled back at the young girl, standing there in the sunshine, her arms full of flowers; she herself had a few of the big carnations which Rosemary had thought too expensive in her hand.

  “Do you often come here?” she asked, when Rosemary had finished paying, as they moved away.

  “Yes—I like the market,” said Rosemary.

  “So do I—I like the people; they are so simple, and busy, and yet have time to laugh and make jokes,” said the Condesa, a little wistfully. “And I like flowers—I see you do, too.”

  “I adore them,” said Rosemary. “I waste hours here, just looking at them.”

  “Which way do you go back?” the Condesa asked, as they waited for the Biarritz bus to pass before crossing the broad street.

  “A different way each time! I love pottering in these funny little places,” said Rosemary. “I thought of going round by the port this morning, it’s so nice.”

  The Condesa, who seemed to have nothing much to do, came with her; they crossed the Place, and went over to the water-side. The port was almost empty—the sardine boats were out, and they looked clear across the sparkling green water to the line of houses along the waterfront of Ciboure just opposite, with Ravel’s house, grey and imposing, among them. Across the Place, the little tables, only one row now, were set out in front of Gaston’s; a waiter in a green baize apron was sweeping out the restaurant; the dust puffed up into the sunlight. Raquel de Verdura’s thoughts went back to the night when she had dined there with James, and on an impulse she said—“That is such an excellent little restaurant”—indicating the waiter and his broom.

  “Gaston’s? Yes—I’ve never been there, bu
t they say the food is lovely,” Rosemary answered. “Daddy and Mummie aren’t very keen on restaurants. Do you often go?”

  “I was there once with Mr. Meelcomm.”

  “Oh yes—I wonder how he is. He was so nice,” Rosemary said.

  The Condesa warmed to her.

  “He got hurt in an air-raid in Almadera—he very kindly went there to see my husband, to bring him news of us—of me,” she corrected herself, “and he wrote to me.”

  “Oh dear,” Rosemary said. “I’m sorry. Was he badly hurt?”

  “His head was hit. He was ill there for some days—then he went back to Barcelona; he wrote from there.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rosemary said again. She wanted to ask about the Conde, but was shy of doing so—like every one else in St.-Jean de-Luz, she knew that he was in prison at Almadera. “Did Mr. Milcom send you good news—apart from being ill?” she asked at last.

  “Oh yes—he saw my husband, and he was well, quite well.”

  “Oh, I am glad of that,” said Rosemary warmly.

  “Yes—he was well. And do you know,” the Condesa went on, expanding under Rosemary’s friendly interest, “he sent me a message that he was very happy, also. Is that not odd?—happy in prison! And Mr. Meelcomm wrote that he believed it true—he seemed so content, he said.”