Winter in Madrid

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘Sí, mas felices, señora.’

  ‘Please, señor, sit down.’

  Harry took his chair again. The old woman stroked the boy’s hair. He stared at Harry with frightened eyes.

  The door opened and a girl in a heavy coat came in, carrying a shopping bag. She was in her early twenties, small and dark-haired, with a heart-shaped face and large brown eyes. When she saw Harry she stopped dead. He stood up.

  ‘What has happened?’ she asked sharply. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ the old woman said. ‘Some dogs attacked Enrique. This man helped him home. Your brother has gone to get some water.’

  She lowered her bag to the floor, still frowning anxiously.

  ‘I’m sorry if I startled you,’ Harry said.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘I’m English. My name’s Harry Brett. I work at the embassy.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Then – you are the one who he—’

  ‘Er, yes.’ So the girl knew what her brother did for a living too.

  ‘What has he done now?’ She gave Harry a long hard look, then turned and left the room.

  ‘My daughter,’ the old woman said. She smiled. ‘Mi Sofia. Corazón de mi vida.’ Heart of my life.

  There were voices on the stairs, the girl’s angry, Enrique’s an apologetic mumble. He limped in, followed by the girl who was carrying the bucket of water. Enrique sat in a chair opposite Harry, and the girl took a pair of scissors from a drawer. She looked over at the boy.

  ‘Paquito, go into the kitchen. Go on. Light the oven for heat.’

  Obediently the boy got up from the bed and left the room, with a last scared glance at Harry.

  ‘I think his leg’s the worst,’ Harry said. ‘But they got his arm too. Can I help?’

  She shook her head. ‘I am all right.’ She turned to her brother. ‘You’re going to have to find some new trousers from somewhere.’ She began cutting his trouser leg, Enrique biting his lip to stifle cries of pain. The leg was a mess, full of puncture marks, lengthened into tears in the flesh where the dogs had torn at it. Sofia took off his jacket and cut his shirtsleeve, revealing more bites. She produced a bottle of iodine from the drawer. ‘This will sting badly, Enrique, but otherwise these wounds will become infected.’

  ‘Is there any sign of rabies?’ Enrique asked tremulously.

  ‘You cannot tell,’ she replied quietly. ‘Were any of the dogs behaving wildly, staggering or blinking?’

  ‘One staggered, the Alsatian,’ he replied anxiously. ‘Is that not right, señor?’

  Sofia looked at Harry, her face sharp with fear.

  ‘I hit it with a stone when it went for me earlier. That was why. None of the dogs seemed ill.’

  ‘Then that is hopeful,’ Sofia said.

  ‘Those dogs are a danger,’ Harry said. ‘They should be destroyed.’

  ‘That will be the day, when the government does something for us.’ Sofia went on bathing her brother’s leg. Harry watched, surprised by her steady cool professionalism.

  ‘Sofia was to be a doctor,’ the old woman croaked from the bed.

  Harry turned to her. ‘Really?’ he asked awkwardly.

  Sofia did not look up. ‘The war put a stop to my training.’ She began cutting cloth into strips.

  ‘Oughtn’t your brother see a doctor?’

  ‘We cannot afford one,’ she replied brusquely. ‘I will see the wounds are kept clean.’

  Harry hesitated. ‘I could pay. After all, I rescued him, I ought to see it through.’

  She looked at him. ‘There is something else you could do for us, señor, something that would cost no money.’

  ‘Whatever I can.’

  ‘Say nothing. My brother told me on the stairs you have known for some time he was following you. He only did it because we need the money.’

  Harry looked at Enrique; sitting there in his cloth bandages he looked weary, a scared boy.

  ‘The block leader, the Falange official for this tenement, he knew we were struggling and said he could get Enrique work. We were not happy when we learned what it was but we need the money.’

  ‘I know,’ Harry said. ‘Your brother told me.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘So you asked him about what he did.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  The girl pursed her lips. ‘Perhaps.’ She went on looking at him. Her face was serious, but it wasn’t pleading; he sensed she wasn’t someone who would plead.

  ‘Thank God Ramón was not around downstairs,’ Enrique said.

  ‘Yes, that gives us a chance. We can say Enrique was attacked by dogs but not that you were there; they might even pay him till he is better.’

  ‘And when I am better, señor, you will not have to worry about who is following if you know it is only me,’ Enrique added. ‘I will say you just walk the streets for fresh air, which is all I have seen you do anyway.’

  Harry laughed and shook his head. Enrique laughed too, nervously. Sofia frowned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said. ‘I’m sorry, only the whole thing is so strange.’

  ‘It’s the world we live in all the time,’ she replied sharply.

  ‘I didn’t bring this situation about, you know,’ Harry replied. ‘All right, I’ll say nothing.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sofia exhaled with relief. She produced a packet of cheap cigarettes and passed one to Enrique before offering one to Harry.

  ‘No, thanks. I don’t.’

  Enrique took a deep draw. There was a harsh snore from the bed; the old woman had fallen asleep.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Harry asked.

  The girl looked at her tenderly. ‘She sleeps all the time. She had a stroke when Papa was killed fighting for the militia.’

  Harry nodded. ‘And Paquito is your little brother?’

  ‘No. He lived in the flat opposite with his parents.’ She looked at him with that unflinching stare. ‘They were union activists. One day last year I came home and found the door of his flat open, blood smeared on the walls. They had taken his parents and left him behind. We took him in, so the nuns would not get him.’

  ‘He has not been as he should in the head since then,’ Enrique added.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sofia has work in a dairy,’ Enrique continued. ‘But it is not enough to keep four of us, señor, that is why I took that job.’

  Harry took a deep breath. ‘I won’t say anything. I promise. It’s all right.’

  ‘Only please, señor,’ Enrique said with another attempt at humour. ‘Do not lead me into that square again.’

  Harry smiled. ‘I won’t.’ He felt an odd sense of kinship with Enrique; someone else forced by circumstances to be a reluctant spy.

  ‘That was a strange place for a diplomat to go walking,’ Sofia said, her eyes keen.

  ‘There was a family I knew there once. Years ago, before the Civil War. They lived in the square where the dogs were. Their block had been bombed.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know what became of them.’

  ‘No one is left there now,’ Sofia said. She looked at him curiously. ‘So you knew Spain before – this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded but said no more. Harry got up.

  ‘I won’t say anything about Enrique. And please, you must let me pay for a doctor.’

  Sofia stubbed out her cigarette. ‘No. Thank you, you have done enough.’

  ‘Please. Send the bill to me.’ He took out a piece of paper and wrote his address down, handing it to her. She got up and took it. He realized that of course Enrique knew where he lived anyway.

  ‘We will see you,’ she said noncommittally. ‘Thank you, Señor – Brett, is that how you say it?’ she asked, rolling her ‘r’s.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Brett.’ She stood and nodded gravely. ‘And I am Sofia.’ She extended a small, shapely hand. It was warm and delicate. ‘We are in your debt, señor. Goodbye.’

  It was a dismissal. To his surprise,
Harry realized he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay, learn more about their lives. But he rose, picking up his hat.

  ‘Adios.’

  He left the flat and descended the dark staircase to the street. As he walked back to the Puerta de Toledo he found his legs were shaking a little and the buzzing was back in his ears. The ruined square came back to him, the dogs. Were the Mera family all dead, he wondered. Like Bernie?

  Chapter Sixteen

  IT WAS BECAUSE OF Bernie’s parents that Harry had met Barbara. He had spent Easter 1937 with his aunt and uncle. He was in the first year of his fellowship then. Since going up to Cambridge four years before he had seen little of them; strangely, that seemed to make them miss him and on his rare visits they greeted him with affection, eager to hear his news.

  One afternoon at the end of April the telephone rang in the hall of the big old house. Uncle James came into the lounge where Harry was reading the Telegraph He looked worried.

  ‘That was your friend Bernie Piper’s mother on the phone,’ he said. ‘The boy you went to Spain with.’

  Harry hadn’t heard from Bernie in five years. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘It was hard to follow her, she was gabbling so, I don’t think she’s used to the telephone. Apparently he went out to fight in the war in Spain. For the Reds,’ Uncle James added with distaste. ‘They’ve had a letter saying he’s missing in action. She wants to know if you can help. Sounds like a can of worms to me. I told her you weren’t in, actually.’

  Harry felt a chill settle on his stomach. He remembered Bernie’s mother, a nervous, birdlike woman. Bernie had taken him to see her in London just before they went to Spain in 1931; he wanted Harry to convince her they would be safe. She had believed his reassurances, if not her son’s; perhaps he represented the respectable solidity of Rookwood that Bernie had rejected.

  ‘I ought to talk to her. I’ll phone back.’

  ‘They don’t have a phone. She asked if you could go and see her. Bit of a cheek.’ He paused. ‘Still, poor woman must be desperate.’

  Harry took the train to London the next day. He remembered the way to the little grocer’s shop on the Isle of Dogs, among the little streets where shabby unemployed men walked. The shop was the same, vegetables in open boxes on the floor, cheap canned goods on the shelves. Bernie’s father sat behind the counter. He was as tall and strongly built as Bernie and must once have been as good-looking, but now he was faded, stooped, with sad dead eyes.

  ‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘Hello. Mother’s in there.’ He jerked his head to a glassed door behind the counter. He didn’t follow Harry in.

  Edna Piper was sitting at the table in the little parlour. Her narrow face under its untidy hair lit up when Harry appeared. She stood and took his hand in a bony grip.

  ‘ ’Arry, ’Arry. How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right thanks, Mrs Piper.’

  ‘I was so sorry Bernie lost touch with you, wasting his time with those people in Chelsea—’ she broke off. ‘Did you know he’d gone to fight in Spain?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t heard from Bernie for years. We lost touch.’

  She sighed. ‘It’s as though he’d never been to the school, apart from the way he speaks. Sit down, I’m sorry, would you like some tea?’

  ‘No. No, thanks. What – what’s happened? My uncle wasn’t very clear, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We had a letter a month ago from the British Embassy. It said there was some battle in February and that Bernie was missing in action. It was so short and curt.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘His pa says that means he’s dead, they just never found a body.’

  Harry sat opposite her. There was an envelope on the table with a bright Spanish stamp. Mrs Piper picked it up, turning it over and over.

  ‘Bernie just breezed in here one day last October and said he was going out to fight the Fascists. Looked at me all defiant because he knew I’d argue. But it was his father it affected most. Bernie didn’t think of that, but I saw how he slumped like all the air was sucked out of him when he told us. This’ll finish him.’ She looked bleakly at Harry. ‘Sometimes children crucify their parents, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You lost both yours, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pete won’t come in, he’s certain Bernie’s dead.’ She held up the letter. ‘Would you look at this? It’s from an English girl Bernie knew out there.’

  Harry pulled out the letter and read it. It was dated three weeks before:

  ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Piper,

  You don’t know me but Bernie and I were very close and I wanted to write to you. I know the embassy has written saying Bernie is missing believed killed. I work for the Red Cross out here and I wanted you to know I am working hard to try and find out more, whether he could possibly still be alive. It is difficult to get information here but I will go on trying. Bernie was always such a wonderful person.

  Yours truly,

  Barbara Clare’

  ‘I don’t know what she means,’ Mrs Piper said. ‘She says he may still be alive, then that he was a wonderful person, like he was dead.’

  ‘It sounds like she’s hoping against hope,’ Harry said. His heart seemed to fall; for the first time it sunk in that Bernie was gone. He put the letter down.

  ‘He wrote to us about her, you know, back at Christmas. Said he’d met an English girl out there. She must be in a dreadful state. I don’t like to think of her there alone.’

  ‘Have you written back?’

  ‘Straight away, but there’s been no reply.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think letters always get through. I wondered – you speak Spanish, don’t you, you know the country?’

  ‘I’ve not been to Spain since 1931,’ Harry said hesitantly.

  ‘Which side do you support?’ she asked suddenly.

  He shook his head. ‘Neither. I just think the whole thing’s a tragedy.’

  ‘I’ve had the Spanish Dependants’ Aid round, but I don’t want money, I just want Bernie.’ Mrs Piper looked him in the eye. ‘Would you go there? Try to find this girl, find what happened?’ She leaned forward and grasped his hand in both of hers. ‘It’s a lot to ask but you were such good friends. If you could find out for sure, find out if there’s any hope.’

  TWO DAYS AFTER his visit to Mrs Piper, Harry took the train for Madrid. He had managed to book a hotel room. The travel agent said it would be full of journalists; they were the only people travelling to Spain now.

  From the train window Harry saw slogans everywhere proclaiming the workers’ war. It was a warm, fresh Castilian spring but people looked grim, embattled. When he arrived in Madrid he was astonished how different everything looked from the time of his first visit: the huge posters, the soldiers and militia everywhere, the people with the strained worried faces despite the propaganda booming from the loudspeakers around the Centro. The newspapers were full of an attempted coup in Barcelona by ‘Trotsky-Fascist’ traitors.

  He checked into the hotel, it was near the Castellana. He had Barbara’s address but wanted to orient himself first. That afternoon he went for a walk through La Latina to Carabanchel. He remembered walking down here with Bernie in 1931 to visit the Meras, the heat of that summer, how carefree they had been.

  The further south he walked the fewer people there were. Soldiers eyed him suspiciously. There were barricades across many of the streets, crude structures built with cobblestones, a small gap for pedestrians; the streets without their cobbles were seas of mud. The sound of artillery became audible, occasional whistles and crumps in the distance. Harry turned back. He wondered, feeling sick to his stomach, whether the Meras were still down in Carabanchel.

  In his hotel that evening he met a journalist, a cynical scholarly looking man called Phillips. He asked him what had happened in Barcelona.

  ‘The Russians asserting control.’ He laughed. ‘Trotskyists my arse. There aren’t any.’

  ‘
So it’s true? The Russians have taken over the Republic?’

  ‘Oh it’s true all right. They run everything now; they’ve got their own torture chambers in a basement in the Puerta del Sol. They’ve got the trump card, you see. If the government challenges them, Stalin can say all right, we’ll stop the arms shipments. He’s even got them to ship the Bank of Spain’s gold to Moscow. They won’t see that again in a hurry.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I’m glad we’re following non-intervention.’

  Phillips laughed again. ‘Non-intervention my fanny. If Baldwin had let the French give the Republic arms last year, they wouldn’t have touched the Russians with a barge pole. This is our fault. The Republic will lose in the end; the Germans and Italians are pouring in arms and men.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Phillips stretched out an arm in the Fascist salute. ‘Sieg heil, old boy. Another Fascist power. Well, I must toddle off to bed. Got to do a report from the Casa de Campo tomorrow, worse luck. Wish I’d brought my tin hat.’

  HARRY WENT TO Red Cross HQ next day and asked for Miss Clare. He was shown into an office where a harassed-looking Swiss man sat behind a trestle table stacked with papers. They spoke in French. The official looked at him seriously.

  ‘Do you know Miss Clare personally?’

  ‘No, it was her friend I knew. His parents asked me to contact her.’

  ‘She has taken it badly. We have given her a period of sick leave but we wonder if she might be better off returning to England.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It would be a great shame, she has been a tower of strength in the office. But she won’t go, not till she knows for sure about her boyfriend, she says. But she may never know for sure.’ He paused. ‘I have had a complaint from the authorities, I am afraid. She is becoming a nuisance. We need to keep good relations with them. If you could help her see things in some sort of perspective …’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’ He sighed. ‘Perspective seems in short supply here.’