Winter in Madrid

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘Buenas tardes,’ she replied suspiciously, just as Sofia opened her door. She looked at him in surprise, her large brown eyes widening.

  ‘Oh. Señor Brett.’

  Harry tipped his hat again. ‘Buenas tardes. I’m sorry to trouble you, I just wondered how Enrique was.’

  Sofia glanced across at her neighbour, who was still peering at him nosily. ‘Buenas tardes, Señora Avila,’ she said in a hard tone. ‘Buen’dia,’ the old woman muttered. She closed her door and scuttled away down the stairs. Sofia looked after her a moment, then turned to Harry.

  ‘Please come in, señor,’ she said gravely. She did not smile.

  Harry followed her into the cold damp salón. The old woman in the bed was using her good hand to play draughts with the little boy. At the sight of Harry he shrank back, shoulders twitching. She put her good arm round him.

  ‘Buenas tardes,’ Harry said to her. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Well enough, señor, thank you.’

  Enrique was sitting at the table, his leg up on a cushion, swathed in bandages. His long thin face had a feverish look. It brightened at the sight of Harry.

  ‘Señor. It is good to see you again.’ He leaned across and shook Harry’s hand.

  ‘How’s the leg?’

  ‘Still bad. Sofia cleans it but it doesn’t really get better.’

  His sister looked embarrassed. ‘It needs time,’ she said.

  There were some childish drawings on the table. Harry looked at them and then his eyes widened. Two Civil Guards, their green uniforms and yellow webbing coloured in exactly the right shade, were shooting a woman, little red jets coming out of her body. Alongside was a drawing of another civil being hanged from a lamppost, a little boy hauling him up on a rope. But the picture had been scored through with thick black lines.

  ‘Paco did those,’ Sofia said gently. ‘He makes those drawings then crosses them out and gets upset. Only Mama can calm him. The noise he made this morning, I thought it would bring Señora Avila over.’

  Harry looked at the little boy. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Señor Brett,’ Sofia said hesitantly. ‘I wonder if I might talk to you in the kitchen.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Harry followed her into a concrete-floored room lined with cheap cabinets. The light was fading; she switched on the light, the low-watt bulb casting a dim yellow glow over the room. It was clean, though the sink was overflowing with dishes. Sofia followed his glance.

  ‘I have to cook and wash up for them all now.’

  ‘No – I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Please, sit down.’ She motioned Harry to a chair by the kitchen table, then sat opposite, her small hands clasped in front of her. She looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘I did not expect you to come back,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘I never got that doctor’s bill.’

  ‘I hoped Enrique’s leg would improve on its own.’ She sighed. ‘But the infection will not clear. I think yes, he needs a doctor.’

  ‘My offer still stands.’

  She frowned. ‘You will forgive me, señor, but why should you help us? After Enrique spied on you?’

  ‘I just felt I’d become involved. Please, it’s only a doctor’s bill; I can help you with that. I can afford it.’

  ‘That old one in the flat next door, if she hears I am getting money from foreign diplomats I know what she will think.’

  Harry reddened. Was that what Sofia thought too? ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’ He half rose. ‘I only wanted to help.’

  ‘No, I see that. Please stay.’ Sofia’s tone became apologetic. She sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘But it is a surprise, a foreigner offering to help us, after what Enrique did.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think my brother needs some of the new penicillin.’

  ‘Then let me help. I can see things are – difficult.’

  She smiled then, illuminating her face. ‘Very well. Thank you.’

  ‘Get the doctor, get any medicines your brother needs, then send me the bill. That’s all you need to do.’

  She looked uncomfortable. ‘I am sorry, Señor Brett, you have saved my brother’s life and I have not even thanked you properly.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Everyone is suspicious of everyone else these days.’ She got up.

  ‘Will you take coffee? It’s not very good, it won’t be what you’re used to.’

  ‘Thank you, yes.’

  She filled a big black kettle at the sink. ‘That old bitch you saw on the landing, now Enrique is ill she wants us to give Paquito to the church orphanage. But we won’t. They are not good places.’

  ‘No?’ He was about to say he knew someone who was volunteering at one of them, but decided not to. Sofia handed him a cup of coffee. He looked at her. Where did she get such self-possession, such energy? Her hair was jet-black but where it caught the light it had a brown tinge.

  ‘Have you worked at the embassy for long?’ she asked.

  ‘Only a few weeks, actually. I was invalided out of the army.’

  ‘So you have fought?’ There was a new respect in her voice.

  ‘Yes. In France.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘A bit of ear damage when a shell went off. It’s getting better.’ He was aware of the pressure in his head, though, still there.

  ‘You were lucky.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose I was.’ He hesitated. ‘I had a bit of shell shock, too. Over that now.’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘So. You have fought the Fascists.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’ He looked at her. ‘I’d do it again.’

  ‘Yet many people admire the Generalísimo. I knew an English boy during the Civil War, a volunteer. He said many English people think Franco is a fine Spanish gentleman.’

  ‘I don’t, señorita.’

  ‘He was from Leeds, this boy. Do you know Leeds?’

  ‘No. It’s in the north.’

  ‘My father met him in the battles in the Casa de Campo. They both died there.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He wondered if the boy had been her lover.

  ‘We have to make the best of things now.’ She took out a cigarette and lit it.

  ‘No chance for you to go back to medical school?’

  She shook her head. ‘With Mama and Paquito to look after? And Enrique now too?’

  ‘With treatment perhaps he could work again.’

  ‘Yes, and a different job this time.’ She flicked ash angrily into a saucer. ‘I told him he should not take that work.’ She looked at him acutely again. ‘How did you come to learn Spanish so well?’

  ‘I’m a teacher, a lecturer, in England; at least, I was before the war came. Our war,’ he added. ‘I visited Spain in 1931, I told you, I suppose that’s when my interest started.’

  She smiled sadly. ‘Our time of hope.’

  ‘The friend I came here with in 1931, he came back to fight in the Civil War. He was killed at the Jarama.’

  ‘Did you support the Republic too?’

  ‘Bernie did. He was the idealist. I believed in neutrality.’

  ‘And now?’

  Harry didn’t answer. Sofia smiled. ‘You remind me of the boy from Leeds in a way, he had the same puzzlement in the face of Spain.’ She rose. ‘And now I should arrange for the doctor.’

  Harry followed her back to the salón. ‘Enrique,’ she said. ‘I have been talking to Señor Brett, I am going to get you a doctor. I will go now.’

  Enrique gave a sigh of relief. ‘Thank goodness. My leg is not a pretty sight. Thank you, señor. My sister is obstinate.’

  The old woman tried to heave herself up. ‘You are kind to us.’

  ‘De nada,’ Harry said awkwardly. The little boy stared at him with fearful eyes. Harry looked round the room again, taking in the musty smell, the stains of damp under the window. He felt ashamed of his own wealth and security.

  ‘Señora Avila was hoveri
ng about again when Señor Brett arrived,’ Sofia told her mother.

  ‘That beata,’ the old woman slurred. ‘She thinks if she tells enough tales to the priests, God will make her a saint.’

  Sofia reddened. ‘Would you mind leaving first, Señor Brett? If we are seen leaving together there will be talk.’

  ‘Of course,’ Harry said, uncomfortably.

  Enrique heaved himself up. ‘Thank you again, señor.’

  Harry said his goodbyes and walked slowly back to the tram stop in the Puerta de Toledo. He watched the ground for potholes and the coverless drains that sent a sickly stench up into the street. If you did not watch out, you could break a leg. He felt sad that now he might just get a doctor’s bill, and that would be the end of it. They would not expect him to come back. But somehow, he decided, he would see Sofia again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY was a busy day at the embassy. Harry had arranged to meet Milagros Maestre at the Prado at four but a press release from the embassy about British victories in North Africa needed translating into Spanish and he was a quarter of an hour late.

  He had rung her at the weekend. He hadn’t wanted to but he couldn’t just leave it, it would be rude; Tolhurst had said it might annoy Maestre and they couldn’t afford that. Milagros sounded delighted and immediately accepted his invitation.

  He had visited the Prado before, with Bernie one afternoon in 1931. It had been bustling with activity then but now the huge building was quiet. He bought his ticket and passed through into the main hall. There were hardly any visitors, fewer than the attendants who paced slowly round, keys clinking at their belts and footsteps echoing hollowly. The light was poor and in the dull winter afternoon the building had a gloomy, abandoned feel.

  He half ran down the steps to the cafe where he had arranged to meet Milagros. She was sitting at the only occupied table, at the far end of the cafe. He was surprised to see a man sitting opposite her. The man turned and Harry recognized Maestre’s companion from the ball, Lieutenant Gomez. There was a frown on his hard square face. Milagros smiled, looking relieved.

  ‘Ah, Señor Brett,’ Gomez said reprovingly. ‘We were beginning to wonder if you were coming.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I was held up at the embassy.’ He turned to Milagros. ‘Please forgive me.’

  ‘It is nothing,’ she said. ‘Please, Alfonso, it is nothing.’ She was wearing an expensive fur coat and her brown hair was freshly set in a permanent wave. She was dressed as a grown woman but Harry thought again how child-like her plump face was.

  Gomez grunted. He stubbed out a cigarette and rose. ‘I will leave you. Milagros, I will see you in the entrance at half past five. Good afternoon, Señor Brett.’ His look was cold as he shook hands. Harry remembered the basket of roses Maestre was supposed to have presented to the nuns, with the Moroccan heads in the middle. He wondered if Gomez had been there.

  He sat opposite Milagros. ‘I’m afraid I’ve offended him.’

  She shook her head. ‘Don Alfonso is too protective. He takes me everywhere, he is my chaperone. Do girls still have chaperones in England?’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her pocket. Good cigarettes, Lucky Strike, not the poisonous things Sofia had been smoking. He had found himself thinking of Sofia all over the weekend.

  ‘Would you like one, Señor Brett?’

  He smiled. ‘No thanks. And call me Harry.’

  Milagros blew out a long draught of smoke. ‘Ah, that is better. They don’t like me smoking, they think I am too young.’ She blushed. ‘They think it is a sign of bad morals.’

  ‘All the women I know smoke.’

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘Not just now, thanks, maybe after we’ve seen the pictures?’

  ‘That would be nice. I will finish this then.’ She smiled nervously. ‘It is a treat for me to smoke in public.’ She blew out a blue cloud of smoke, angling her face away from him.

  Harry didn’t mind visiting art galleries if he didn’t have to stay too long, but he wasn’t really an enthusiast. The sense of the Prado’s cavernous emptiness grew as they walked through the echoing galleries. Most of them were largely bare, empty spaces on the wall where the pictures had been lost or stolen during the Civil War. Black-uniformed guards sat on chairs in the corners, reading Arriba.

  Milagros was even more ignorant of art than Harry. They would stop before one and he or she would make some stilted remark and move on.

  In the Goya room the dark horror of the ‘Pinturas Negras’ seemed to make her uneasy. ‘He paints cruel things,’ she said quietly, looking at the ‘Witches Sabbath’.

  ‘He saw a lot of war. I think we’ve done nearly everything now – would you like a coffee?’

  She smiled at him gratefully. ‘Oh yes. Thank you.’

  The galleries had been cold but the cafeteria was overheated. When he brought two cups of bad coffee over to their table she had taken off her coat, releasing an overpowering musk of expensive perfume. She had put on far too much. He felt suddenly sorry for her.

  ‘I should like to see the galleries in London,’ Milagros said. ‘I should like to see all of London. My mother says it is a great city.’

  ‘Has she been there?’

  ‘No, but she knows all about it. My parents love England.’

  Spaniards didn’t like their daughters going out with foreigners, Harry knew, but in these times a place in England would be a desirable destination in the eyes of someone like Maestre. He looked into her plump earnest face.

  ‘Every country looks better from a distance.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Milagros looked downcast. ‘But it must be better than Spain, here everything is so poor and dirty, so inculto.’

  Harry thought of Sofia and her maimed family in that flat. ‘Your father has a fine house.’

  ‘But it is all so insecure. We had to flee Madrid during the war, you know. Now there is this new war hanging over us, what if we lose everything again?’ She looked sad for a moment, then smiled again. ‘Tell me more about England. I have heard the countryside is pretty.’

  ‘Yes, it is very green.’

  ‘Even in summer?’

  ‘Especially then. Green grass, lots of big, broad trees.’

  ‘Madrid used to be full of trees. When we came back the Reds had cut them all down for firewood.’ She sighed. ‘I was happier in Burgos.’

  ‘Things are pretty insecure in England too now. It was different before the war.’ He smiled. ‘I remember at school, there was nothing nicer than a long game of cricket on a summer afternoon.’ He had a vision of the green playing fields, the boys in cricket whites, the clop of bat and ball. It was like a dream, as far away as the world his parents’ photograph had been taken in.

  ‘I have heard of cricket.’ Milagros laughed nervously, looking more like a plump schoolgirl than ever. ‘But I do not know how it is played.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I am sorry, this afternoon – I do not know anything about paintings, either.’

  ‘Neither do I, really,’ he replied awkwardly.

  ‘It was just, I had to think of somewhere we might go. But if you like we could go out to the country some time, I could show you the Guadarrama mountains in winter. Alfonso could take us in the car.’

  ‘Yes, yes perhaps.’ She was blushing, there was no doubt about it, she was soft on him. Oh hell, Harry thought. He looked at the wall clock. ‘It’s time to go,’ he said. ‘Alfonso will be waiting. Mustn’t annoy him again.’

  Her mouth quivered slightly. ‘Yes.’

  The old soldier was standing on the steps of the Prado, smoking and staring across the road at the Ritz. It was starting to get dark. He turned and this time he smiled at Harry.

  ‘Ah, right on time. Bueno. Did you have a good time, Milagros?’

  ‘Yes, Alfonso.’

  ‘You must tell your Mama all about the pictures you saw. The car is round the corner.’ He took Harry’s han
d. ‘Perhaps I shall see you again, Señor Brett.’

  ‘Yes, Lieutenant Gomez.’ Harry shook hands with Milagros. She looked at him expectantly but he said nothing about meeting again. Her face fell and he felt guilty but he wasn’t going to string her along. He watched as they walked away. Why did she like him, they’d nothing in common at all. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said again, aloud.

  HARRY WAS MEETING Tolhurst for a drink at the Café Gijón. He passed the ministry where he had met Maestre, the street patrolled by civiles with sub-machine guns. He pulled his coat collar up. It was cold again; after the baking summer and the failed harvest, it looked like a cold winter was coming.

  Paseo de Recoletos was a broad, tree-lined avenue. The shops were reopening after the siesta, yellow light spilling on to the pavement. Even here the window displays were sparse. He had heard of the Gijón but never been there. Walking into the mirrored bar he saw people scattered about the tables. There were artistic types with beards and extravagant moustaches but no doubt they were regime supporters, like Dalí. ‘Fascism is the dream made real,’ a young man was saying enthusiastically to his companion; ‘the surreal made real.’ You can say that again, Harry thought.

  Tolhurst was sitting with his bulk squeezed in behind a table against the wall. Harry raised a hand, then fetched a brandy from the bar and joined him.

  ‘How was the date?’ Tolhurst asked.

  Harry took a slug of the brandy. ‘That’s better. Pretty awful actually. She’s nice enough but she’s – well – just a kid. She had a chaperone. Maestre’s ex-batman or whatever he is.’

  ‘They’ve got very old-fashioned ideas about women.’ Tolhurst looked at him. ‘Try and keep in with her if you can, it’s a link to Maestre.’

  ‘She wants to go for a drive in the Guadarrama.’

  ‘Ah.’ Tolhurst smiled. ‘Get you on her own, eh?’

  ‘With Gomez driving.’

  ‘Ah well.’ Tolhurst blew out his plump cheeks. ‘Oh God, I wish I was back home sometimes. I get homesick.’

  ‘Missing your family?’