Not Just a Soldier’s War

by Betty Burton

  ‘May not like what?’

  ‘Drive a big Mercedes.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Mercedes saloon car.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s a Mercedes?’

  ‘Want to see one?’ She followed him to one of the many outhouses. ‘There! What d’you think?’

  Garaged there was the largest and grandest car Eve had ever seen. Beneath mud and dust it was easy to see that the dull gleam of the radiator-grille and metal trims was of a high quality, but the bodywork had been sprayed or painted in red and black. Ozz opened the passenger door and bounced on the sprung seat. ‘Come on, get in.’

  Sitting behind the leather-covered steering wheel she looked along the bonnet and then at the interior. Nothing had been done to spoil the hide covering or the walnut panels in which the many instruments were set. Eve’s experience of expensive motors was limited to a few drives with David and later with Duke, neither of whom had driven anything this luxurious. As with the Bedford lorries, one could see without turning the engine over that there was power under the bonnet, which was why she loved driving the big ambulances. Holding the steering wheel at ‘9.15’, she glanced in all the mirrors and touched the gear lever. Then she remembered that it was more than likely that Alex was about to move her about again, and began to feel irritated at Ozz for aiding and abetting.

  ‘Why didn’t Alex speak to me?’

  ‘You were in the shower-stalls.’

  ‘And she couldn’t wait, so she got you to soften me up for whatever it is she wants me to do. What, for Heaven’s sake, could anybody do with a thing like this.’ She smiled, trying to show Ozz that she didn’t blame him. ‘Come on, come on, I shan’t bite your head off.’

  ‘Well, I’m real glad of that. It’s going to be used for the ferrying of official visitors.’

  ‘What the hell kind of official visitors?’

  ‘MPs on fact-finding visits, Aid to Spain people, film people…’

  Her first suspicion had not been wrong, then. Alex was palming her off again with a nice little job for a girl. ‘Hollywood stars who want something for Picturegoer?’

  ‘Crikey, Anders, you can be real prickly! No, people who make movies, propaganda for the Republic, the stuff that brings in the money to provide more ambulances and trained medical teams. They need to get to villages, up mountain passes. Hell’s bells! You know what I mean – people who want to go to some of the war zones. A substantial motor like a Mercedes is just the ticket.’

  ‘I’d be no good, I don’t speak any foreign languages.’

  ‘God help us, Anders, nobody expects the English to speak a foreign language! These people have interpreters. You’re the right man for the job.’

  Disappointment welled up within her. She longed to be given something more heroic than this. ‘Damn it, Ozz, I came here to drive ambulances.’

  ‘OK. No skin off my nose. Go and ring Alex so at least we know what to do with these trucks.’

  ‘I will!’ Flicking out angrily with her wet towel, she stalked off, knowing that Ozz would be smiling and shaking his head as he watched her. Well then, be amused, I don’t care.

  Alexander answered with her usual efficient, ‘Alexander!’

  ‘Driver Anders here.’

  ‘Are you feeling better? Ozz gave me a very graphic picture. It must have been hellish.’

  ‘It was. I’m feeling back to normal now that I’ve showered and changed, thank you. Ozz has tried to tell me that driving an elite few in this palace on wheels will help the cause.’

  ‘I wouldn’t agree on the elite few, but the rest is about right.’

  ‘I drive trucks and ambulances.’

  ‘I know that perfectly well, and very well. You’re as good as any – maybe not including Ozz, but he’s done more miles.’

  ‘So why take me off the job?’

  ‘Because I’m in a better position than you are to see which of my drivers is best suited to this particular work.’

  She certainly had the capacity to put Eve’s back up, but Eve decided to remain calm. ‘It seems such a useless job.’

  ‘I think I’m the best judge of that. I have the facts and you do not. What if your orders were to ride a pure-bred Arabian to Madrid for stud use – without a saddle, of course.’

  Eve felt that she was being backed into a corner from which there was only one way out: Alexander’s. ‘I’d still want to know if it was worthwhile – for the cause.’

  ‘Don’t be such a prig, Anders. You aren’t the only one with the cause at heart, some of us have it very close to our heart.’

  ‘Twice in a single day. Would I still drive ambulances?’

  ‘Of course. I can’t see that a VIP car will be in use every day. What is twice in one day?’

  ‘Being told I’m a prig.’

  ‘Does us all good to be told that sometimes. Twice in a day is a bit much, though. Ozz?’

  ‘Oh, never mind. All right, then, but on one condition.’

  ‘Anders, you can also be very difficult. I don’t bargain with my drivers.’

  ‘I just don’t want people calling it a VIP car, or referring to me as the chauffeur.’

  Alex laughed. ‘I think we could come to some kind of accommodation over that. Who is it politicizing you, Anders? I’ve never heard you on the subject of elitism and privilege before today.’

  ‘You think I can’t do it by myself?’

  ‘I’m sure that you can.’

  ‘A child on fire concentrates the mind wonderfully.’

  ‘I’m sorry your initiation was so violent.’

  Eve, suddenly, couldn’t answer.

  ‘Anders?’

  ‘OK. What are we going to do with the trucks?’

  ‘That’s fixed. Now this car, the Mercedes, is a commandeered vehicle.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed, all that red and black paint.’

  ‘It belonged to some industrialist who couldn’t take it on the plane when he scarpered to Italy. Now, Ozz can handle anything on wheels. The quickest way to get it on the road is for him to show you under the bonnet and then for you both to go for a good test run. Take a day’s leave.’

  Ozz was waiting outside the shed with the car, using his time to advantage by making up his twice-used cigarettes.

  ‘How’d she change your mind?’

  ‘Something she said about horses.’

  ‘Horses. No wonder she’s taken a fancy to you.’

  ‘Fancy! She rubs me up the wrong way. Born-to-rule type. Even out here she’s giving the orders and we’re taking them.’

  ‘Ne’ mind, Andy, come the red revolution nobody’s going to give the orders.’

  ‘That’s not socialism, that anarchism.’ Ozz was about to say something. ‘And don’t ask who’s been politicizing me.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to, I was going to ask what horses have to do with it.’

  ‘It’s too long a story.’

  ‘She’s quite a horse-flesh fancier, has some back home called Hipsen-horses or something like that.’

  ‘Lippizaner. They’re the most valuable horses in the world.’

  ‘Oh, I think our Alex is loaded all right. I don’t suppose you’d like a roll-up.’

  Eve eyed the salvaged tobacco. ‘I don’t suppose I would either, but thanks for the offer.’

  He winked amiably. ‘You should taste it when you’re out of ciggie paper and there’s only your sheets of Izal.’

  The events of that morning were not forgotten, but they were dealing with them as best they could by trying to return to normal.

  Over the weeks at the depot Eve had grown to like Ozz for the good, reliable partner he was. She liked his nice, intelligent face, his broadchested athletic physique and the soft, strung-out way he had of speaking.

  They spent the rest of that day going over the car with a fine-tooth comb. Alex was right, he was a wiz with vehicles. ‘There y’are, Andy, now you’re a fully-paid-up bodger. Only thing you wo
n’t be able to fix is an empty gasoline tank if you forget to keep a spare can. So, can of gasoline, bottle of water. Tomorrow we see how she goes.’

  ‘She says we should take a day’s leave.’

  He nodded. ‘She’s a wise lady is our Alex.’

  She said, ‘Lippizaner! Natural enemy of the people,’ without rancour. Just before they went in search of a place to sleep, he said, ‘I have t’ tell you, Andy, the little kid…’

  He didn’t need to say. She had known all along that a child with that severity of burns couldn’t live long.

  ‘His name was Luis.’

  ‘I had thought he was a little girl.’

  He shook his head. ‘When you were in the shower, I saw Dolores – by the way, she’s gone, got another lift – she knew all of them. Can you imagine!’

  No, she could not. Who could imagine? It didn’t make it better that Dolores was a nurse; they were her own villagers, and it was possible even that the bombers were of her own nationality. She wanted to tell Ozz the coincidence of the name Luis, but that would mean admitting to her past, when her own name had been Louise.

  * * *

  That night spent at the hospital was unnerving. After washing in a kind of horse-trough, Eve again felt the same overwhelming need for sleep that she had experienced on most other nights since she had been here, what with the heat of the day and the tension of the job. She had expected, as the Villa Luna was run by the English, that the nurses with whom she shared a damp and crumbling room would also have been English, but they were Spanish. With smiles they offered naranja, not orange-coloured fruits but small, greenish ones which turned out to be the most sweetly delicious oranges Eve had ever tasted. The pungent scent filled the room, overwhelming the musty smell of several centuries of decay.

  She fell asleep, but only on the edge of a restful sleep, jumping awake from time to time with the tail-end of a disturbing dream dissolving as she opened her eyes to the small steady flame of a primitive little oil-lamp. That evening she had asked a few people if they recognized Ken’s name, but no one had.

  Restless, she tossed and turned, then lay awake allowing her mind to drift. It had been stressful at first being Eve Anders, but by now she had no trouble in answering casual questions about herself, never being specific, stepping aside. The little lamp flickered and its flame expired. The room was very dark, but she sensed someone coming in quietly. Then she heard soft breathing close to her ear, as though someone was bending over her. She was not surprised, she had been thinking of Ozz and it was almost as though she had been expecting him to come. The mattress was very narrow, but she moved over to make room, and as she turned she detected an evocative and distinctive scent – the shaving cream David used.

  David? It couldn’t be, yet there was no mistake, it was David who was easing himself on to the narrow mattress. ‘David?’ she said quietly. ‘Shh,’ he said, and stopped her next question by closing his mouth over hers. David? His lips were soft, warm and moist as she remembered. Joy and pleasure flowed through her body. She was glad that he had found her. Now she could have it all, freedom and love. Her lips parted to his firm and mobile tongue which tentatively touched the tip of hers, and she heard herself give a quiet moan of pleasure. ‘Shh, Louise,’ he said, speaking close to her ear.

  ‘How on earth…?’ she whispered. ‘I wanted…’

  ‘Shh,’ he said again, kissing her and making her nipples rise as his cool hands discovered bare skin under her shirt.

  His clothes smelled of cars and cigarettes, his face and hair of the astringent sweetness she associated with him. She turned to face him. Moonlight coming in at the small, bare window allowed her to see his handsome face and tousled hair. She thought: I don’t care if the others wake up. They don’t know me and I don’t know them. I’m a stranger in this strange land, making love in what was once a monastery. The idea of such a daring rendezvous was thrilling.

  Even as she thought of what she wanted him to do next, his hand slipped down over her body and gently parted her thighs. He knew exactly what she wanted him to do, and anticipated her. This time he wouldn’t stop as he had before; now she was older, experienced, liberated and free. This time David would be as confident as Duke had been. No restraints, no repressions, no being honourable.

  She wanted to be on her back, to feel the weight of his body; she wanted to be facing him, wrapped in his arms and legs; she wanted him behind her, pulling her into the hollow of his body; she wanted to be standing against a tree as she had been when she and Duke had taken one another, desperate to relieve their hunger.

  She held him, guided him, felt him slip into her as firmly as Duke had done, and imagined that she could feel the rough bark of the tree pressed hard against her back. Now she could scarcely move or breathe for the intensity of the pleasure. Over her, under her, above and below her, inside her body and on her skin. She was tantalized by a compulsion to extend this voluptuous liberation, and by the desire to give in to it. Soon she had no choice. The tidal wave of sensual pleasure crashed. Sensation flowed upwards. Breathtaking. Extreme. She was aware only of lust being tremendously transformed into ecstasy. She gave herself up to the great thump and pulse that surged through her body.

  Fulfilment at last almost drowned her, making her gasp for breath. For the time it lasted, she had forgotten the lover who had detonated the explosion until, in the darkness, he spoke softly. He spoke not in the cultured upper-class accent of David, but in Duke Barney’s plain country speech. He said, ‘It don’t signify nothing,’ as he had said when they went their separate ways and he had thrust into her hand a gemstone still embedded in rock.

  Suddenly, of its own accord, the flame of the little oil-lamp jumped back to life, startling her and causing her to sit bolt upright with her heart thumping.

  The room smelled of orange peel and sleeping women.

  She was trembling and breathless, her body slick with moisture still pulsed spasmodically. Clutching her shirt around her, she grabbed her things and rushed out along the empty stone corridor to the small ablutions room with its cold water in a stone trough. There she stood over a drain and tricked cold water over her sticky skin.

  It was as well she had no mirror, for she would have been ashamed to look into her own eyes. She might have left her old life, but she had not been able to leave behind the effect of years spent in a church-ridden school. Her conscious self had no regrets at the way she and Duke had given in to their mutual lust, but this unnatural experience must have come from some unwholesome part of her mind, and she was afraid of it.

  By the time she had combed back her wet hair, put on a clean shirt and swilled the other through with cold water, her more familiar self had returned sufficiently for her to go and look for something to drink.

  Although it was not yet light, from the sounds that echoed strangely along the stone corridors other people were up. She made her way through the passages until at last she found the kitchens. A woman, probably in her late thirties, with short greying curly hair and a trim figure, was watching a pan of milk and a kettle at the point of boiling. Eve’s instinct was to slip away, but the woman had seen her and waved. ‘Hi, nice to see another early-bird.’

  ‘Is this the hospital kitchen?’

  ‘No, those are way over the other side. Coffee?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She grinned, showing good American teeth. ‘Have yourself a seat.’ She held out a hand, ‘Sweet Moffat, been called Sweet since I was in first grade and said my name was Adeline.’

  ‘Eve Anders. No need to ask where you come from.’

  ‘You do too. I was born in Brighton, Sussex, England. Raised in the States and been married to the same American for ten years.’

  ‘I’d love to see America. I’ve been a film fan since I was a little kid. I feel I know the Bronx, Staten Island, Monument Valley, even Tombstone Gulch.’

  ‘It isn’t all Hollywood, but it’s a grr-eat country. Are y’always this early?’

  ‘No
t usually before dawn. I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Haven’t seen you before, are you a nurse?’

  ‘No, a truck-driver.’ How legitimate that sounded, as though she had been a truck-driver all her life.

  Adeline Moffat raised her eyebrows and made a one-thumb salute. ‘Glad to hear it. I’m all for women doin’ the thing they want ’stead of the thing they should. I’ve seen women truck-drivers, mostly they’re pretty good too. Pity it takes wars to get us out of our kitchens.’

  ‘Are you a nurse?’

  ‘No, no, I work with the children, orphans and refugees.’

  ‘Is your husband in Spain?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, Will’s here.’

  ‘In the International Brigade?’

  ‘No, Will is dead. Will and I are Quakers, pacifists, you know?’

  ‘Yes, I do know. One of my best friends back home is a Friend, isn’t that what you say?’ ‘Back home’ slipped out unawares.

  ‘Will and I came out here to set up a small aid station. We were on our way to Guernica but got caught up in the hills when the place was destroyed. Will died… heart attack. It’s OK, I’m through it now. I continued with what Will and I intended, so I’m with the Society of Friends Spanish Relief Committee doing what we can for the children. You got family?’

  ‘Two brothers, one is out here, with the IBs in the British Battalion.’

  ‘How long has he been out here?’

  ‘He left home a couple of years ago. He was going to walk and work his way across Europe, but I think he fell in love with Spain. It’s ages since I saw him, or heard from him. I don’t even know if he’s all right.’ Her voice broke and, although she pressed her hands to her eyes, she could not stop the tears that began to course down her face.

  ‘Oh, honey, honey.’

  The soft womanly embrace, full of concern and understanding, did for Eve. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not really the weepy sort.’

  ‘It’s OK to cry, honey, it’s something human beings do. Sure you miss your brother, brothers are pretty special. D’you want to talk about it?’

  ‘No, it’s all right. Probably driving too long without a real break. It just caught me unawares.’