by Betty Burton
‘I feel very old today. Poor little Marco, that’s a terrible wound.’
‘He may pull through. Young people are very resilient.’ He looked directly at her. ‘Is that a trace of the Hampshire Hog I detect?’
‘Possibly.’
‘It is just that my college, de Montfort, is in Hampshire.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of it.’ She wished that the nurse would come and say that they were ready for Marco in theatre.
‘You know the boy?’
‘Only that he was part of a company I drove south a few weeks ago.’
‘Is that what you do, transport soldiers around the country?’
‘It is what I was doing. I’m afraid that I am now a courier and chauffeur.’
‘I hadn’t realized there was such a… a service.’
‘It’s for special visitors, VIPs, we call them Vipps.’ She squatted beside Marco, brushing his cheek with its soft down of black peach-bloom as the nurse had done. He had probably run away from the classroom to fight for his country. The awful, splendid ideals of youth.
‘I see,’ said Brother Nellis. He didn’t.
‘It is thought that special people require special transport.’
‘Goodness, I thought that sort of thing went into exile with the King of Spain.’
‘I probably protest too much. I also fetch and carry X-ray plates. Today I was supposed to be taking Mr Siel and his aides to the airport, but I don’t know what will happen now.’
‘I was with Mr Siel when you sent for me. He’s very busy.’
‘Do you know him well?’
He squatted beside her, the two of them watching Marco closely as they talked quietly. ‘Not well, but he and I have spent quite some time together. He has quite a sense of humour – he says he likes to try his hand before he will let me try mine. He is a good man. He once said that I was the long-stop – it’s a sporting term – to catch the souls that get past him.’
‘I’ve never met a monk before.’
‘Have you not? Perhaps you thought that we all went about with dusty feet and hooded robes.’
‘Yes, I did, to be truthful.’
‘Mine is a teaching order. I was on a two-year sabbatical near Jávea when the Nationalists invaded.’
‘The presbytery that is now a hospital?’
‘Yes. The establishment was closed down, dispersed.’
They fell silent.
‘Marco gave me this as a keepsake, to protect me. His grandmother made it for him.’
‘Ah, even the atheists like to have their little charms. Better safe than sorry, does no harm. Don’t you have your lucky heather or rabbit’s foot?’
‘No. Just a pocket-piece.’
‘You have a pocket-piece? How interesting.’
She was surprised that he should be familiar with such a pagan charm. Hers had been given to her years ago by Bar Barney’s mother and, along with the uncut precious gemstone from Duke, she carried it with her always.
‘Not many people know what a pocket-piece is.’
‘I think of them as a kind of thought embedded in ashwood.’
‘Ironic, isn’t it? Marco really needed his sacred talisman. I tried to return it to him just now, but he wouldn’t let me.’
‘He must think a great deal of you.’
‘He’s still bleeding and the bottle won’t last much longer. If you’ll stay with him, I think I’ll try to find Mr Siel.’
‘Straight through, at the back of the building. You’ll know when you get there.’
She did. The smell of ether was strong, the smell of blood and carbolic acid stronger. The smell of life and death.
As a nurse wearing a red rubber apron and cloth mask and a female orderly wearing a white overall and Red Cross armband came through a swing door pushing a wheeled stretcher, Eve recognized the voices of Mr Siel and Dr Parragon.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to a hurrying nurse, ‘could you ask—?’
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ The nurse made a shooing motion.
‘All right, but could you ask Mr Siel—’
‘Mr Siel is extremely busy. What is it?’
‘I know he’s busy. But I’m his driver, I’m supposed to get him to the airport.’
The nurse looked as though she had never heard of an airport. ‘He’s due back in London, and I want to know whether I am to wait.’
‘Oh, well, you’ll have to… down there somewhere… away from…’ She disappeared with the name of Sister Pelham on her lips.
Mr Siel, peeling off his gloves with a peculiar squeaking sound, came through the door of the operating theatre. He too wore a red rubber apron, plus a kind of white shift, galosh-like shoes, and a white, round cap tied with tapes.
‘So. Right. You are waiting.’
‘I just want to know whether you’ll be going to the airport.’
They had to step aside for a trolley being pushed by an orderly and a nurse.
‘Marco!’ Eve exclaimed. His eyes were wide open now.
Mr Siel stopped the trolley. ‘What is this?’
‘Shell fragments. Ribcage, right shoulder.’
‘Do you know this young man?’
Marco said huskily, ‘Señorita Anders, por favor…’
The nurse said, ‘Is he for you, sir?’
‘Yes, be quick.’
‘Please.’ Eve bent over and gave Marco a light kiss on his pale forehead. He said something as he was being wheeled away. The orderly turned. ‘He says, please forgive him.’
Eve bit her lip to stop herself from crying. Mr Siel said, ‘It may be a long wait. I think we shall not be returning to London until tomorrow. Could you arrange something, a morning flight?’
‘Of course. I’ll see admin at once.’ She turned to leave.
‘Miss Anders?’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t save them all.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Thank you, I know you will.’
Next morning on the way to the airport, Eve told Mr Siel about Marco and the bullet that missed her. ‘He insisted that I have the charm his grandma made him. It will always be at the back of my mind that he insisted that I have his shield.’
Mr Parragon put in tetchily, ‘These superstitious charms are more likely to make them reckless, so he might have lost his head instead of only an arm.’
‘Not only an arm, ribs and breastbone, Edward, and not lost, not entirely. You see, Miss Anders, much of the soft tissue was destroyed.’
‘Mr Siel, I didn’t even expect him to come through.’
As she helped to unload their bags at the little hangar that was the airfield waiting area, Mr Siel said, ‘Perhaps you will be visiting the boy before he returns home?’
‘I will try. I often have X-ray plates to deliver.’
‘Tell him, say that we wish him well.’
‘I will, Mr Siel, if I can find the right words in Spanish.’
‘In my opinion, for what this is worth, the boy will not mind if you speak Hindustani. Warm hands and friendly faces say a great deal.’
As she drove away, Eve tried to imagine him in his other role, the Harley Street surgeon famous for treating royal skiing accidents and crashed rally speedsters. Benevolence and understanding had not been part of her idea of Harley Street specialists. She had thought of them as imperious men pandering to ladies such as David’s grandmother, Lady Margaret Gore-Hatton, whose manner had once caused Eve to panic and hang up when she had tried to telephone David. If she had been wrong about Harley Street specialists, might she also have formed too hasty an opinion of David because his grandmother was high-handed?
She had grown to like and admire Mr Siel, but was the transportation of his team and the X-ray plates to be the best she could do for Spain?
Eight
There were times when it seemed difficult to remember where one was, but this wasn’t so bad, it could be fixed in one’s memory as one does with
a telephone number: Operator, Sierra Pandols 666, please. Back from the front line now, at a rest camp for the unit he had been filming in action, dressed only in khaki shorts and a battered but very good Panama hat, David Hatton leaned back against a shady tree and wrote out a label to affix to his can of film – ‘Hill 666: Pandols sector’, then jotted down a script for the voiceover.
Hatton + Hatton Films. Report by David Hatton
We had barely taken over the Lincolns’ position on the main heights of the Pandols when the enemy launched its biggest and most sustained attack yet.
An artillery barrage, the like of which none of us had ever experienced, crashed down around us, and flying shrapnel and rock splinters inflicted dozens of minor injuries.
When the barrage lifted, two fascist infantry battalions hurled themselves against us. Although still reeling from the shock-waves of the barrage, we repelled the fascists. The fighting was intense and the battalion received heavy casualties.
The battalion has now been relieved by a Spanish unit. The 35th Division seems likely to receive a citation from the Brigade for their efforts in holding the hill against incredibly superior odds. This report for ‘With the 35th in Spain’ is filed by David Hatton.
Smiling to himself, a tall, fair man, wearing only khaki trousers and the ubiquitous grass-soled zapatos like those worn by the Spanish militia, squatted beside David Hatton who looked up briefly and did a doubletake. The similarity between the two was astonishing.
‘Rich! By all that’s holy! Where did you spring from?’
The two men clasped one another by the forearms and held on. ‘From Hill Six, Six bloody Six.’
‘I’ve just got a can full of that.’ David indicated a film-carrier and the script he had just completed.
‘Stuff for old Hatton Plus?’ Their outfit had been given the name Hatton + Hatton, which in the early days they had thought amusing.
‘Right. A series of short films for Aid to Spain. Fund-raisers. Great stuff, every one a winner.’
‘Well, so they should be, you’re the best movie reporter in town, Davey.’
‘Only since you left. I mean, they’re winners because I have only to point the camera and the story tells itself. No chance of a second take. Gives one a keen edge.’
Richard Hatton punched his brother genially on the shoulder. ‘Modesty doesn’t sit well on you, Davey old lad.’
They were twins, not identical, but extraordinarily alike, with greenish-gold eyes, wheat-coloured hair and eyebrows, and long, straight noses square at the tip. Six feet tall and handsome, they had always drawn attention, especially when seen together. In London the Hatton brothers were well known in the world of film and journalism.
David and Richard Gore-Hatton had both grown up with a passion for making movies since the day when an indulgent great-uncle introduced them to home-movie-making. Later, the same uncle and his sister – their grandmother Lady Margaret (who, before her marriage to a lord, had been a talented actress) – had shown sufficient faith in the boys’ talent to make a small investment which had helped them buy equipment and secure a specialist niche in the film-making industry.
In 1936, when they were in Spain reporting on the first civil disturbances, Richard had met and fallen in love with Maite Manias, a Spanish playwright, and decided to stay. At the outbreak of the war he had joined the militia, and when the International Brigade was formed, he volunteered.
‘Do you hear from Maite?’
Richard Hatton shook his head and fell silent.
‘Trouble, Rich?’
‘She thought that she was pregnant.’
‘Oh, God. And she’s still in Orense?’
‘No, we moved to the coast, to Vigo, then I had to leave her and get back into the Republic. The plan was that she would travel on to Rosal and try to get across to Portugal and on to London that way. But I haven’t heard a word.’
‘For how long?’
‘Weeks now. I’ve used every last contact to try to find out something, but I have to be careful for her sake. They shoot first and ask afterwards and they imprison anybody and everybody who’s the slightest bit suspect. And for God’s sake, Davey, Maite wasn’t exactly discreet in her work. You know what happened to Lorca and he wasn’t even really political.’
‘I’ll see what I can do, Rich. I met Malou French on my last trip back to London, she might be able to discover something.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Met her passing through Biarritz of all places.’
‘Why of all places? Biarritz is exactly the place to meet the French tart.’
‘Oh, she’s done with gossip and fashion, she’s taken up with the Bishop’s Fund for Relief of Spanish Distress.’
‘That right-wing Catholic outfit?’
‘That’s right, she’s in charge of the stocks for a kind of travelling hospital, I think that’s what she said. Anyway she has the ear of some very important people in Burgos, that’s how she got to be in charge of a set-up that’s supposed to be entirely run by Spaniards. She has some nerve.’
‘Then why in hell’s name are you thinking of asking her to get information on Maite’s whereabouts?’
‘Why not? She and I recognize one another for what we are – political enemies – but she’s not the type to do anything against one of her own.’
‘Maite’s not one of her own, she’s a left-wing playwright and poet.’
‘I’m one of her own, you and I both are. We did our duty at her coming-out ball. Look at the Mitfords, daggers drawn politically, but neither of the girls would hand the other to the enemy.’
‘You’re too nice, Davey. I wouldn’t trust any of that set as far as I could throw them.’
‘Rich, we are that set.’
‘Were, Davey, were. I’d inform on Malou.’
‘Would you really?’
‘You know I would. So would you, young Hatton, so would you.’ David Hatton did not answer at first. He and Malou French had had a brief liaison. For both of them it had been sleeping with the enemy. ‘“Play up, play up and play the game”, ta-ra, and all that, Richard?’
‘That was never honour. Honour is what’s embedded in Marxism, honour’s why I’m here. “Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land thy Lord givest thee.” That doesn’t mean nods and winks in the City, does it? That means take care of people, take care of everybody.’
David Hatton saw that something profound had happened to his brother since they were last together. ‘You haven’t caught religion, have you, Rich?’
Richard Hatton smiled, the ghost of his old handsomeness lit his face fleetingly. ‘Not in the way dear old “MacDougall” Gore did.’
David smiled too, a flash of warm family feeling passing between them at the memory of one of their more eccentric relations. ‘Douglas would have been fine if only he had caught some nice quiet Baptist variety instead of that drear Scottish kirk variety.’
‘I haven’t caught anything, old love, it’s our legacy.’ The legacy to which Richard referred was that same eccentricity that had manifested itself in religion in Douglas Gore-Hatton. It had always been something they spoke of lightly, perhaps to reassure themselves that their commitment to communism, in a family with blue blood in its veins, was not also mere eccentricity. ‘The red Hatton blood might have curdled with the old Gore blue to produce Douglas, but ours is unadulterated Hatton red, Davey. Decent red blood.’
David Hatton uncapped one of his cameras. Knowing what was expected, his brother looked away from the lens and lit a thin roll-up cigarette, allowing the smoke to drift about his profile. ‘That OK?’
‘You’re still a vain old sod, Rich. For two pins I’d make you turn the other way and take your bad side.’
‘Haven’t got one these days. Lost weight, uncovered the perfect Hatton facial bone structure. Look.’ He grinned, lifted his chin and turned his face in the opposite direction.
David’s concern as a brother almost outweighed his objectivity as a professional cameraman. Ric
hard’s bright eyes stared out from the deep, dark hollows of his gaunt features.
‘Make a fist, Rich.’
Richard did so, looking directly in the camera’s lens. ‘¡No fucking pasarán!’ He took a long drag on his cigarette, then inspected the tip as he said fervently, ‘That’s more than just a slogan, Davey, you know that? We shall not let them pass, we must not. If we can’t stop the jackboots here, they’ll keep on marching and marching. And it will be the Hattons of this world who will be sent out to catch the bullets in their teeth; the Gores will stand back and urge them on as they’ve been doing for centuries.’
David had never seen his twin show so explicitly the extent to which he despised the Gore blood they shared.
The shadows were growing longer. People elsewhere in the rest camp began moving about again. ‘Soon get a brew of tea, I should think,’ Richard said. Neither of them moved.
‘What about Malou. Shall I work on it?’
‘I wouldn’t trust the bitch as far as I could throw her.’
For a reason he would have found hard to put into words, but it had to do with the possibility that Richard might not live much longer, David wanted to tell him secrets, perhaps to confess that he had not always confided in him as much as Richard might have supposed. ‘Did you know that we once had a bit of a fling?’
‘God help us all.’ Richard stared at him. ‘You and who else? How many to a bed? Or was it on horseback or a back-room in Chinatown?’
David was not fooled by the wry smile; Richard was troubled. ‘Sounds as though you’ve been there, Rich.’
‘Christ, Davey! No! And I never imagined you… I thought we were the only two in our set who hadn’t been there. Anybody else involved? She likes threesomes and the odd dog or two, doesn’t she?’
‘Oh come on, Rich, Malou might be a bit of a mattress, but… no, it was just the two of us.’
‘How innocent. For Christ’s sake, she’s not even a half-way decent journalist.’
‘You’ve always said no experience is wasted – she wanted pictures.’
‘Of the two of you? Christ, David, you never did them?’
‘Why not? It was a bit of a challenge, really, making something more artistic than the regular crude stuff.’
