THE YOUNG SPANIARD

by MARY HOCKING

  Mr Colman ran his finger along the edge of his desk.

  ‘I think perhaps, for that reason, it is best not to become too . . . er, shall we say, closely associated with any of them.’

  There was a long pause. It occurred to Mr Colman that his remark might have been taken in a way that he had not intended. He was alarmed when he looked up to see that Miss Winston was going rather green about the face again. Another embarrassing scene must be avoided at all costs. He suggested that she should take the rest of the evening off. When she left he watched anxiously from his door to see whether she made the entrance. She did, although she swayed rather perilously past the Captain who was talking to Marie Heber at the cash desk. Marie, Mr Colman noticed approvingly, appeared to be holding her own very nicely.

  Rose had also noticed that Marie was doing very nicely. The bitch! she thought as she stood in the street, the warm rain darkening the shoulders of her blouse. She wondered what tales Marie was telling. She began to walk along the pavement which was empty because the rain was so heavy. It was after six. She had promised to meet James later in the evening; he had said rather ominously that he wanted to talk to her and Frangcon. She had been annoyed with him at the time for making such a fuss, but now she was eager to see him. She stopped at a ’phone box and rang his hotel.

  ‘I’ve left work early,’ she said when he came to the ’phone. ‘Why not come round to mine? We can talk without being disturbed there.’

  The sound of his crisp, Scots voice was reassuring. He would know what she ought to do. She wondered whether one could bribe the Captain. Or perhaps she would have to make up a story to tell the British Consul so that he could get her out of the country if the Spaniards were nasty about the episode. That would mean giving up her job and having one of those dreadful scenes with her mother who would see the whole thing in the most melodramatic of lights. But if the worst came to the worst, she would be willing to go through with it after this afternoon’s experience.

  By the time she reached the apartment house, she was in much better spirits. James was waiting there, with Frangcon who had just came back from Sitges; they looked wet and bedraggled and very glum, anyone would have thought they were the ones who had had a bad day. While Frangcon made some coffee. Rose related the story of the Captain’s visit.

  ‘It was like a scene from one of those dated, occupied country films. Everyone sweating profusely; long silences and lecherous glances. And then he actually lit a cigar!’

  She paused for laughs which didn’t come. They were going to be intense about it, she could tell that from the darkening of Frangcon’s eyes and the meditative way that James looked down at the floor. She plumped herself on the bed and swung her feet up.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake try not to look like a couple of pallbearers who’ve lost the hearse. If anyone should be distressed it should be me.’

  ‘That’s true enough.’

  James’s voice was dry and the Scots accent particularly pronounced. He was looking haggard and much older. Rose thought. She could see her own reflection in the mirror; she looked haggard, too, in a different way. Even Frangcon seemed to have had some of the bloom dusted off her.

  ‘Spain is putting years on us all,’ she said. ‘Let’s pack up and go home.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The rain belt was moving away to the south-east. Although the rain was still heavy in Barcelona it had stopped further north. From the window of the Paris-Madrid express one could see the shadows of the clouds on the mountains.

  ‘Such a barren country,’ the Minister sighed.

  ‘But beautiful,’ his assistant suggested.

  The Minister, who had grown up in the Loire valley, was not impressed.

  ‘I wonder what a man like Trennet makes of it,’ the assistant murmured. Trennet was much on his mind and he had been seeking an opportunity of mentioning him.

  ‘You’re sorry for him,’ the Minister accused. There was no reproof in his tone.

  ‘I knew him when he was much younger.’

  ‘Was he so very different then?’

  ‘Not really, I suppose. Passionately fond of France.’

  ‘People seem to form these passionate attachments for places they seldom visit.’

  ‘He always regarded Algeria as France.’

  The Minister settled back in his seat and looked at his companion, who was much younger than himself, with dispassionate affection. After a time, he murmured:

  ‘ “All men kill the thing they love.” I’m not at all sure that that is true of all of us; I hope not at any rate. We have a habit of trying to universalize our own weaknesses. I shouldn’t like to think we are all as destructive about the things we love as Trennet.’

  ‘Don’t you think that perhaps we are all prepared to destroy in order to safeguard the things we value most?’

  There was another silence and then the Minister said wearily:

  ‘Well, there may be an element of truth in that. I am prepared to see Trennet destroyed in order to ensure the preservation of what I regard as sanity in human affairs.’

  ‘But he wasn’t very important. They are only using him as a scapegoat.’

  ‘Perhaps the scapegoat can be turned into a useful symbol. If so, Trennet will have served his purpose. Someone has to pay for these acts of madness.’

  The train was slowing down as it passed a village, the street lined with plane trees, a long twisting area of shadow dappled here and there with late sunlight. The dusty yellow houses huddled together, each seeming to lean for support on the other so that one felt that if one should fall the whole village must collapse.

  ‘Shall we get him, do you think?’ the assistant asked.

  ‘If it’s true that he’s here.’

  ‘But he has friends.’

  ‘They will not take big risks for him. As you said yourself, he wasn’t very important.’

  They were out between fields again; a few labourers wearing blue overalls and large straw hats were stacking corn. Stacking corn in June! The Minister sighed and shook his head.

  ‘Don’t worry about Trennet,’ he said gently. ‘Life would not be much for him from now on. We shall try him for the murder of General Auber—but there are other crimes to his account.’

  ‘He probably doesn’t regard them as crimes.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. I knew a man once—knew him well— who had done the kind of thing that Trennet has done. He said he was right. They always do: it would be too terrible to admit that kind of mistake. But I always felt that for him the body had become a prison. What was it that St Paul said? Something about being delivered from the body of this death.’

  The assistant looked at his watch. There was a touch of acidity in his voice as he said:

  ‘Well, in a few hours his deliverers will have arrived.’

  In the growing darkness of Rose’s room James was saying:

  ‘There may not be much time.’

  Frangcon, who had at last finished making the coffee, said:

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘To pack up and go home as Rose suggests.’

  Frangcon handed Rose a cup of coffee.

  ‘She wasn’t serious. I certainly can’t go home. I don’t start at my new school until September.’

  If the enemy were at the gate, James felt that she would still refuse to leave until September. He turned to Rose.

  ‘Can you arrange to take your holiday now?’

  ‘I’m not due for it yet.’

  ‘But if you explained to your manager that things could be awkward for you if you stayed here mightn’t he be prepared to let you go rather than risk a scandal?’

  ‘But I haven’t decided where I’m going for my holiday.’ Rose sipped her coffee and began to feel a little stronger. ‘I might visit a friend in Geneva and I don’t know when it will be convenient . . .’

  ‘It’s not a question of convenience. In a week it may be too late.’

  Rose gulped a mouthful of coffee
and burnt her throat. ‘It can’t be as bad as that,’ she said irritably. ‘After all, Raoul hasn’t committed a murder or anything.’

  The remark was greeted by the kind of silence which follows a joke in the worst of taste. She looked up and was surprised by the similarity of their expressions; their eyes met hers reluctantly and she realized that they were pitying her. She put the cup down on the bedside table; her hand was trembling and the cup tilted. She watched the coffee slop down the leg of the table and automatically dabbed at it with a handkerchief. James said:

  ‘Let me.’

  While he rubbed away with unnecessary zeal, she said in a high voice:

  ‘What is Raoul wanted for?’

  They spoke at once. James said ‘Murder’ and Frangcon said ‘Massacre’. James turned to look at Frangcon.

  ‘You knew about that, then?’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘He told you!’ Rose was screaming.

  ‘It just came out. Rose, as though he needed someone . . .’

  ‘He told you!’

  ‘Rose, he didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘You! He told you! What about me?’

  She looked wildly from one to the other; her face seemed to be falling apart, little cracks scored the smooth surface of the flesh, the mouth gaped, the eyes stared out of a chasm of terror. James got swiftly to his feet and fetched a glass of water; she tried to push his hand away but he dashed the water in her face. Frangcon was standing beside her making ineffectual soothing gestures. Rose coughed and spluttered. When she got her breath back, she said:

  ‘The sod!’

  Frangcon put her hands to her face and shook her head muttering to herself ‘no, no’; she looked dazed and bewildered like a person watching a cinema parade which has suddenly gone into quick motion. James gritted his teeth and wondered which of them he wanted to hit the most. Rose was beginning to cry. She whined:

  ‘It’s not true, is it? You’re trying to frighten me to get me go home, aren’t you?’

  ‘He is wanted in France for murder. That, at least, is true.’ This time neither of them interrupted him and he went on briskly: ‘So it would be better to get out of here as soon as possible. It seems, from what happened at your office today, that some sort of rounding-up process may already have started; at least they think it important to make a show of looking into things. We should clear out before they get down to it in real earnest.’

  While he was speaking Rose was quiet, but once he stopped he saw the wild look coming back into her eyes. She needed something to occupy her mind, something constructive to do to make her feel that she was already ensuring her safety. He said:

  ‘Get your things packed. I’ll make a few enquiries tonight and come round here first thing in the morning. If you like I’ll go along to your office with you.’

  She nodded her head; her expression was still rather blank but she seemed to have taken in what he said. He saw her eyes wandering round the room and was relieved when they came to rest, with a more purposeful expression, on the top of the wardrobe.

  ‘I’ll get your suitcase down for you, shall I?’

  ‘Please.’

  When he had put the case on the floor by her dressing table he turned to Frangcon who was standing by the window.

  ‘Will you come with me?’

  She glanced across at Rose; but Rose was not listening, she was busy opening drawers and turning over the contents in an aimless way.

  ‘I don’t think we should leave her.’

  ‘She’ll be all right as long as she has something to do. We must talk things over together.’

  As they reached the door, Rose turned suddenly:

  ‘If Raoul is taken prisoner he’ll tell them about me. Suppose they catch him before we can get away, suppose . . .?’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that,’ James interrupted. ‘The trouble will start if he escapes; it’s then that they will start asking for explanations.’

  ‘Then I hope they catch him. I hope they catch him soon.’ She saw the expression on James’s face and her eyes wavered. ‘Well— do you blame me?’

  ‘I think he should have told you before he let you become involved with him.’

  His response was grudging. As they went down the narrow stairs, Frangcon said:

  ‘Don’t be too critical of Rose. She’s frightened of going to prison.’

  She spoke gently, as though she was explaining an attitude peculiar to Rose. They went out into the courtyard; there were puddles between the uneven flagstones and water dripped from the trees.

  ‘Aren’t you a little frightened, too, Frangcon?’ he asked.

  ‘For Raoul, yes.’

  The night breeze caught her hair and drops of rain water splashed her cheeks; she looked, he thought, like a girl in a Carné film, innocent and undaunted, moving against a misty, slightly unreal background. She is the only one of us who has not yet come to terms with this situation, he thought. He wished that he could shield her from reality, but the stiffness of his bruised body reminded him that this was no longer possible. As they turned into the street she slipped her arm in his and the little confiding gesture filled him with despair. She seemed further from him now than at any time since he had known her.

  ‘We’d better go and see Raoul, hadn’t we?’ she said. ‘I expect he’ll be in his room. He said he was going there when we got back from Sitges.’

  ‘Why should we see him?’

  ‘Why?’ She stopped, staring up at him. The light from a shop window illuminated their faces; two young men passing stared curiously and turned to watch them. ‘But we can’t just go away without telling him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  His eyes, usually so steady and reassuring, were as hard as pebbles.

  ‘But James, what will happen to him?’

  ‘Does that matter to us?’

  ‘Of course it matters to us. We haven’t known him long; but even so, we’re probably the only friends he has in Barcelona.’

  ‘You talk as though he was a normal person, someone who could expect to be treated like any other reasonably amiable individual. I thought you said he told you about the massacre at El Sarat? Surely, after that episode any decent person would think him better out of the way.’

  She sighed and began to walk on again, her hand still resting on his arm as though she was afraid that she might lose him in the busy street.

  ‘There are a lot of decent people in the world, James; you won’t lack support for your views. But someone has to be on Raoul’s side. It would be so dreadful if he were to be quite alone.’

  ‘He is alone, Frangcon. Haven’t you grasped that yet? He is alone and nothing you can do will change that.’

  ‘You can’t condemn a man in that way. You’re not God.’

  ‘I’m not condemning him. He has condemned himself. He has put himself beyond your reach or mine.’

  She pulled him to one side while a party of Americans swept by laughing. They were by a shop window full of Toledo work, mantillas and fans. She looked at the articles displayed, remembering the evening that James had given her the fan and how happy she had been. Now he seemed to want to take her happiness from her, to destroy the beliefs to which she had always clung so tenaciously.

  ‘I don’t believe in failure,’ she said. ‘Not with human beings, at any rate. I think that if you really believe in another person there is always something that can be done for them.’

  He did not answer. Her breath misted over the window and she turned away disconsolately. They walked in silence for a time. Then James said:

  ‘If it will make you any happier, I’ll come and see him with you.’

  He felt the warm pressure of her fingers on his arm. He could tell by the sudden lightness of her step that she felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She began to talk, eager to cement their reconciliation.

  ‘He looked so dreadful when he told me about it, James—so stricken. I’m sure you would understand how I
feel if you had seen him then. We couldn’t abandon him, we couldn’t; we should be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives to see whether he was still there.’

  James was not listening. He was thinking: from now on we shall drift apart; from the moment that we see Raoul we shall be opposed to each other. But in spite of this knowledge, he seemed unable to believe in the scene which lay ahead. Occasionally in his life he had had these premonitions. ‘Gaelic superstition’ his mother had called it, and he accepted her verdict. He did not believe in sixth sense. Nevertheless, as he walked beside Frangcon he felt quite sure that they would not find Raoul. But whether they found him now or not, the scene would only be delayed; it would be played out somewhere, sometime, in circumstances more desperate than this.

  As he walked through the broad avenues, across the brilliant squares with the fountains playing, he felt like a man on his way to an appointment in a hospital who knows that all the possibilities are unpleasant but cannot really believe in any of them. They passed the Plaza de Cataluña and made their way into the dingier, treeless area beyond the big main roads. What was the purpose of this meeting? He had no idea; his mind was quite unprepared. This was something that he had always feared—to be catapulted into a situation before he had had time to adjust his mental balance. He looked around anxiously for a café; Frangcon could always be tempted by coffee and it would give him time to think. But already she was saying:

  ‘This must be it. He said it was off the Calle de la Industria.’

  There was an arid, lifeless atmosphere about the street; a sense of anti-climax. Men and women in working clothes hung around looking like people who have seen the last of a carnival and are wondering what to do next. They watched Frangcon and James with rather more than the usual curiosity. A boy in his teens sitting on the pavement outside the tension where Raoul lived got up and ran to the back of the louse shouting, ‘Pablo! Pablo!’ as James and Frangcon entered. There was no need to enquire for Raoul’s room. The door at the far end of the hall was open. They could see from where they stood the chest of drawers, the front gaping, the drawers tipped against the wall, the contents spread over the floor. They stood on the threshold and looked at the torn sheets trailing over a chair, the slashed mattress, its straw stuffing scattered about the room. There was a torn print of a flower by Matisse on the top of the dressing table, the smashed frame lay on the floor and there was the glitter of broken glass. A bottle had been overturned and the pool of ink was not yet dry. A man, Pablo presumably, was standing beside them.