Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  But Mr. Oldhead was not to be soothed. Like Crumpaun, he was practically convinced that the academic Spaniard had wanted the photographs for spying purposes, and that he must be in some way connected with the Biarritz organisation; and he bitterly regretted that he had never troubled to learn his name, or more about him. He made all the enquiries he could, without result—that Parrot had, as Rosemary said, gone to ground. But what maddened Henry Oldhead was that he should have been made the unconscious instrument of Franquistas; the sabotage stories had become public property by this time, and the thought that the Republicans might owe the loss of planes they so desperately needed to an agent armed with his photographs really tortured him. He took counsel with Crossman, who shared his Republican sympathies, and a couple of days later they went off together to the Préfecture at Bayonne and put the whole case before the French authorities. Crossman’s prestige as Epoch correspondent made access to the Préfet easy, and Mr. Oldhead had been astute enough to charter for the drive that same chauffeur who had driven Crumpaun and Rosemary on their expedition to the little hill; the photographs, and his evidence, made it possible to establish precisely where the col was. Mr. Oldhead was warmly thanked, the photographs were sent to Bordeaux; the authorities acted promptly, and three days after a little English girl had dropped a photograph album into a puddle on a Basque by-road, a whole posse of extra police were guarding the stretch of frontier on which the small col lay. For whatever purpose that route might have been used, it would be used no more.

  Chapter Seven

  Under—the Grotte de Sare

  James Milcom had taken back with him to Spain the stimulating burden of a love avowed and returned; and during the long hot days and nights when he lay in his uncomfortable little hotel at Almadera, attended at intervals by the young Scottish doctor from the dressing-station in the wine merchant’s cellar, he had plenty of opportunity to brood over it. Now the difference between an unavowed love and a love confessed and reciprocated is that the first as it were exists by itself, moving invisible and unassailable in its own shadowy world of dream and longing, where no material hand can pluck at it, and no voice decry; but from the moment of mutual avowal it comes out into the glaring dusty arena of actualities and facts, to be stung with the brightly-coloured barbs of possibilities, to be menaced by the implacable sword of morality, and to face the red lure with the whole of society for audience. So at least the situation presented itself to James, to whom the imagery of the corrida now came quite naturally, as he lay in pain and fever, thinking about his love for Raquel and hers for him, and what the future might hold for them; thinking also all the time of that middle-aged man in the big yellow prison on the hill above the town, one corner of which he could even see, blurred and distorted, through the cheaply-glazed window of his small hot room—the man whose treatment of his wife had been a shameful legend, but who had seemed to him, James, to be in some indefinable way good. He saw no certain outlet for his love, no clear future; and yet it stood in him savage and strong, challenging attack, vital and untamed. He was relieved when the young doctor, worried by the state of his wound, packed him off to Barcelona, where he might hope for cooler quarters and more adequate remedies. The supply of medicines and dressings in Almadera was neither large nor varied.

  In Barcelona he improved, but even there there was a shortage of everything, it was noisy, and he was not fit to do much work; and when the doctor there remarked one day that it would be a good thing if he could go away for ten days or so to France, to rest and have better treatment and make a real recovery, James’s heart, with a great bound, urged him to seize on his excuse and go back to St.-Jean-de-Luz. And back he went.

  He did not announce his coming—for some reason he wanted simply to walk in on Raquel, unexpected; he felt that her face, so, might tell him something, give him some answer to the problems that had tormented him. The trains were awkward, and he slept at Pau; next day he got a lift from a member of the Prisoners Exchange Commission there, and, with him, walked into the hall of the Hôtel Grande Bretagne at half-past four in the afternoon, a few days after Mr. Oldhead’s excursion to the Préfecture at Bayonne.

  The first person he saw was Mrs. Oldhead, sitting reading Life; from her he learned that the Condesa and Rosemary were out walking, gone to the Phare to see the waves—it was a rough day, and the white mushrooms were appearing continuously above the mole in the centre of the bay. He took a quick cup of tea with her, booked a room, and went out after the two of them—driven, now that he was so near, was in the same town, by an over-mastering hunger for Raquel’s face and quiet grey eyes, and the low sound of her voice.

  They were not on the top of the small grassy hill, where he went first, nor in the square walled enclosure by the little chapel—a fierce wind tore at everything, up there, as if it would pluck the very masonry from the turf; the waves below, huge and green, flung themselves at the breakwater, worrying it, retreating and returning like a pack of rollicking wolves, and a continuous bellowing thunder, as from the throats of a hundred giant wolves filled the air, deafeningly. Sight and sound alike were splendid, immense, inspiring. He went down one of the little chalky paths on the further side of the hill, bent against the wind, carrying his hat, till he struck the narrow track that curves round it, leading down to the break-water—and there, between the cliff and the sea, suddenly he met them, coming up laughing, their faces bright with spray and excitement, their damp hair streaming out from under the coloured handkerchiefs that they had tied round their heads.

  Rosemary saw him first. And his expression, and still more the Condesa’s, when a second later she turned from speaking to the young girl, and caught sight of him also, told her the truth. The sheer beauty of the look that passed between them then caught the girl up on a sudden wave of exaltation—to let her drop, presently, with a vague sense of having struck something and been bruised, as a body is bruised that is flung by a wave far up on some harsh shore. It was not till some time afterwards that she recognised the absured and impossible origin of this feeling—that that look, on James Milcom’s face, could have meant for her something of what it visibly meant to Raquel de Verdura.

  They cut across behind the Phare, dropped down the hill and strolled back along the front, all three together; near the Casino, Rosemary made her Spanish preparation an excuse to slip away, and the other two walked on towards the Bar Basque together, and turned in there for tea—at tea-time the Bar Basque is practically deserted. Sitting there, he told her in detail about his visit to the prison, and Pascual, and his fellow-prisoners—she listened, now grave, now amused, but always kind and interested. At last, rather cautiously, he asked her who La Paquita would be—saying that he had heard of her as being in the prison, but without mentioning the peculiarity of the Conde’s manner when she was spoken of. The Condesa knew at once who he meant. “That will be Francisca de Verdura—she is a cousin of Pascual’s. I heard that she was ‘working’ “—James was familiar with this euphemism for the trade of a spy—“but I did not know that they had taken her. She is a most dear child—she was often with me. She is young and very brave. You saw her?” she asked eagerly.

  No, James had not seen her.

  “Poor child—I wish you had. I would so have liked to know how she is; how they treat her. I expect they will soon kill her,” said the Condesa flatly. “But of course to get to her would have been most difficult—I realise that.” She spoke proudly and sadly about this girl, and others like her who risked their lives “for Spain”—it struck James that La Paquita’s imprisonment really caused her much more concern than her husband’s.

  Then, with a change of face and voice to an almost faltering nervousness, which moved him very much, of course she asked about Juanito. “You heard no more, after you wrote? Nothing in Barcelona, from anyone?”

  No, he told her gravely, nothing. He had decided before his arrival to make no mention of the possible connection between La Paquita and Juanito; that one remark thrown out by Pepe th
e bus driver, and the Conde’s change of manner at his brother-in-law’s name, were too tenuous to be considered as real information—and since the very suggestion that Juanito might be “working” too would add to her anxiety, it would be foolish and cruel, he felt, to worry her with such rumours till he knew more. Actually, here he was wrong; but he was not to know that till much later.

  They hardly spoke at all, that first day, of themselves, though both were intensely conscious of the growth and strengthening of their feeling for one another which avowal, followed by absence, had brought about—when, over the cheap garish tea-table, he looked at her with deeper eyes, their mutual avoidance of speech was like an open communication. But the first effect on James of seeing her again was to sweep away, for the moment, all thoughts of the Conde. He was still weak after his wound, and the physical weakness made him tender and unguarded. The sheer lovely comfort of looking at her again, after weeks of absence, would have sufficed him then. And the simplicity and eagerness of her questions about the air-raid, and the Doctor, and his fever and his treatment brought back to him, with a funny sense almost of regret, the way they used to talk about wood and eggs and tinned milk in the days in Madrid, days that had now taken on the spurious preciousness of the period before awareness came—days like the dawn of time, when in the cool clear early light one held a jewel in one’s hand, and knew it only for a pebble, to be cast away at will. Precious partly because of the wonder of that unconsciousness, partly because then one was still safe, was still one’s own man; one reached out fearlessly to the other, not recognising the godhead that can blast—Psyche confident in the sheltering dark, before she lifted the terrible lamp of revelation. In James Milcom, with his conditioned fear of love and the tyranny of love, this feeling, common in some degree to everyone, was particularly strong; but in the days that they spent together then it was gradually overborne by the full tide of a complete human emotion, a fully conscious love, of body as of spirit. The whole of him loved her—and came to rejoice in the completeness of his love, and its mastery of his mind and heart; he came to exult, after his years of insulation, even in the deep pangs, the strange pains and fears which love inflicts, in knowing the fulness of human experience at last. Sometimes the Irishman in him derided himself for his subjection, but the derision was of the mind alone; his manhood rose up in him, the soul and the blood triumphing over the chill reason, and brought him again to an accepting, a splendid joy.

  He was less afflicted, this time, by the sense of moving in a crowd. The Duquesa seemed to be busy, going over often to Biarritz, and left them to themselves; the patch and plaster on his forehead afforded him an excellent excuse for avoiding alcohol and noise, which let him out of much frequenting of the society of his fellow-journalists at the Bar Basque. He walked with Raquel a good deal; she was a surprisingly good walker for a continental, as he had begun to find in Madrid, and under his supervision bought a pair of strong low-heeled shoes for their expeditions. One day he remembered especially, because it was the first time he actually saw her confronted with flowers growing wild, often as he had heard her speak of them. Though it was now November, on the Basque Coast the days were still mild and sunny; they walked up to S. Joseph’s Chapel, on a low ridge behind the town. The poor little building, reached by a turf track, stands practically in the farmyard of one of those substantial, deep-eaved, chocolate-shuttered Basque farms; inside, bouquets of artificial and withered natural flowers, and other cheap offerings, surrounded the gaudy simple image and shrine. They looked around. “These are from the girls who have prayed here, and got sweethearts in a year,” Raquel said, indicating the votive offerings.

  “Really? Why should they pray to S. Joseph for sweethearts?” James asked.

  “I suppose because he was Our Lady’s fiancé, and in the end married her,” Raquel said, with that little sophisticated smile of hers. “Anyhow once a year the girls who are without a fiancé come here, from all the country round, and pray for one—and if they get one in a year, they bring an ex-voto afterwards.”

  “How do you know all this?” he asked, as they emerged again into the mild sunshine.

  “Rosemary told me. I think she came here and saw them.”

  “I shouldn’t think she would ever need to pray for a fiancé!” he said—“Nor you either, my darling.”

  She put on her enigmatic look, that was yet so sweet.

  “I might have to,” she said. At which of course he put his arm round her and kissed her, out in the grassy lane. Then they wandered on, following the lane till it wound out onto the Ascain road. Close to the junction, by the roadside, there was a little flat-topped grassy knoll, with a group of young oak trees on it; they walked up to get the view, and found the deep greyish grass under the trees full of the slender weak-stemmed autumn crocus, that is so much more pink than mauve, and has an unearthly fragility, appearing as it does among withering grass and fallen leaves. Raquel gave a soft exclamation of delight, when she saw them first, and moved gently about, holding her hands out in a sort of tender wonder over each fresh group, in the loveliest gesture James had ever seen—then she stooped and gathered a few, and then more.

  “But they will fade if I carry them in my hand,” she said. So James had to produce his handkerchief, and in that, most carefully, they carried them home down the road.

  But at the back of James’s mind, during these exquisite first days, the picture that he had of Pascual recurred over and over again, and the strange contradictory impression of his goodness—and wrestled in him with that strong human tide. More than once, holding her hand, playing with it, as they sat somewhere in the sun, studying its strength and beauty with the most direct naturalness, he surprised her by laying it back gently in her lap, and saying—“Let’s go on—shall we?”

  But it was some time before he could bring himself to speak of this to her. Raquel surprised him, she whom he had known always as so contained, so quiet, by a sort of direct recklessness, a passionate simplicity in her declarations, when they spoke of their love—and this was so wonderful to him, so unimaginably strange and precious, that he could not for some time bear to do anything to imperil its continuance. Indeed it was she who first touched on it, on a day when he had in fact decided that at length he must speak. They were sitting out in the big glen up beyond S. Joseph’s chapel—a wild place, empty, with steep tawny slopes of dead bracken shouldering up against the sky behind them, and in front a long view down to the sea. With her head on his shoulder, his arm about her, she picked up his other hand and held it against her cheek—then she drew it to her lips, kissed his fingers, lightly as a moth, and still holding it there, spoke actually through his fingers.

  “Even if it is very wrong to love you, as the priests would certainly say, it is not unkind or cruel, as it would be if Pascual loved me. It is a sin, but of another sort.”

  He could have laughed at her calm casuistry. But he did not.

  “My darling, are you sure that he really doesn’t love you?” he said, taking his arm from round her, to lean forward and look earnestly in her face. “You know, I got the impression that he cared for you very much indeed. He talked about you a great deal. It—it upset me, rather.”

  “Oh no,” she said, with soft decision. “You are quite mistaken. Since years, he has not cared for me at all. It does not matter,” she said gently, as if disclaiming any hint of reproach, “and he has always been most courteous; but he has not cared at all. He is not that sort of man, you know,” she said with easy finality—“he is of quite another sort.”

  “That may have been so in the past,” James objected, “but I think you are mistaken now. I must tell you this, my darling—it wouldn’t be fair not to. I think he must have changed. He almost said as much; he said it was all quite a new experience for him. I think something is happening to him, in there—and that it won’t be at all the same thing when he comes out.”

  She stared at him, puzzled and incredulous.

  “Just what do you mean? How
changed?”

  “I think—it’s hard to explain—but—well, he surprised me very much. I expected him, however bravely he might be putting up with everything, to be the complete man of the world,” James said, incompetently.

  “But so he is.”

  “No—not now. He wasn’t just stoical, he was accepting what happened. I tell you, I felt that he was good—and that was the last thing I expected to find,” said James bluntly. “And he was carving away and carving away at those peachstones to make you a necklace.”

  “Yes, that was sweet of him—and it would pass’the time,” Raquel said, still with that soft tolerant matter-of-factness. “But for the rest”—she looked at James—“it is not so. Gentle and polite and brave, of course he is; but serious, no.”

  “God, how I wish I could be sure of that,” he said.

  “But you can. I know it. Who should know him if not I?”

  “Oh, my darling, I suppose so! I’d give my soul for you to be right, you know that.” He took her in his arms again, with a sudden boundless sense of relief, and kissed her as if he could never stop.

  But the relief did not last. They discussed the subject several times; she was so much surprised at James’s impression of Pascual, and still more—he realised this, though she never said so—at the fact of his having imparted it to her that she recurred to it more than once. “It is so strange that you should have thought this,” she kept saying. She stuck to her own point of view, of course; quite without rancour, smoothly accepting a familiar situation, she held to her knowledge of Pascual for what he was—not serious, and not good; least of all in any sense devoted to her. Her incredulity was quite gentle, but complete. She ended by almost convincing James that he really had been mistaken. After all, he had only seen the man once, for a short time, and without knowing him before; he had only the contrast between his preconceptions and that one interview to set against her years of experience and the known facts. And after brushing aside James’s scruples, she came back, then and always, during the whole time that he was at St.-Jean, to the joy of being, at last, loved, and to how much she loved James. Blindly in love himself, it was not human, James felt, to expect him to go on setting up an impression formed at one interview with a stranger as a barrier between himself and his heart’s delight. So they dined together, and lunched together—in the little trellised inn garden at Ainhoa, at the Etcheola at Ascain, on the terrace of the inn at Biriatou, where Rosemary had drunk red wine weeks before, and at Gaston’s, down by the port; and walked together—through the brown oakwoods above the Nivelle, along the cliffs between St.-Jean and Hendaye, where to Raquel’s delight, the striped gentians still bloomed in the yellowing grass, and lithospermum prostratum, its first flowers blue as jewels, sprawled over the earthy banks; or else among the dunes and pinewoods along the shore beyond Biarritz, where thyme and small strong-smelling plants made an aromatic scent when they sat and crushed them in the sun. It was a time of wonder, of tender delight, such as James had never known.