by C. J. Sansom
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re alone in my flat, I didn’t mean—’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘No. I am glad. It was not hard to see how you felt. And I have been thinking of you since the first time you came, sitting in our salón looking so lost but wanting to help us.’ She lowered her head. ‘I did not want to feel this, our lives are complicated enough. That is why I did not get the doctor at first.’ She smiled. ‘Poor Enrique. You see, I am selfish really.’
He leaned forward and took her hand. It was small, warm, pulsing with life.
‘You’re the least selfish person I’ve ever met.’ Something in him still hesitated, he couldn’t quite believe this was happening.
‘Harry,’ she said.
‘You pronounce my name like no one else,’ he said with a little choking laugh.
‘It is easier to pronounce than the way the English say David.’
‘The boy from Leeds?’
‘Yes. We were together for a while. In war you have to take chances while you can. Perhaps I shock you. The Catholics would say I am an immoral woman.’
‘Never.’ He hesitated, then leaned forward and kissed her again.
Chapter Thirty-One
BARBARA HAD HEARD that if you loved a person and then stopped loving them, sometimes it turned into hate. She hadn’t believed it but it was true. Sandy had said her heart was full of sentimental mush, but it wasn’t, it was full of loathing now.
She had to hide her feelings. It was Wednesday, and she had met Luis again; Agustín would be back from leave in three weeks’ time, on the fourth of December. As soon as he came back, Luis would go to Cuenca and finalize everything. The date for the escape would depend on the guards’ timetables but they should be able to do it before Christmas. During that time she had to make sure Sandy suspected nothing.
The house with its big rooms and expensive, immaculately clean furniture felt increasingly oppressive. Sometimes Barbara wanted to pull down the highly polished mirrors and smash them on the waxed tables. As she moved restlessly through the house or looked out at the wintry garden, she began wondering if she was going a little mad.
After their argument over the orphanage Barbara had once again made herself as agreeable and submissive as she could. The Sunday after their row Sandy went out for the morning in the car; business, he said. Barbara went for a walk and bought some Andalusian roses in an exclusive flower shop; they were expensive but they were Sandy’s favourites. She brought them in to dinner in a vase. He picked one up and sniffed it.
‘Very nice,’ he said flatly. ‘You’re out of the sulks, then?’ He was still in an angry mood.
She said quietly, ‘There’s no point in quarrelling.’
‘Your letter to Sister Inmaculada’s raised a few eyebrows. One or two people have asked if I’m harbouring a subversive.’
‘Look, Sandy, I don’t want to cause problems with your business friends. Why don’t I volunteer for something else, work at one of the veterans’ hospitals perhaps?’
He grunted. ‘They’re mostly run by the Falange. I don’t want you rowing with them next.’
‘So long as I don’t have to see children mistreated, that’s all.’
He looked at her, his eyes bleak and cold.
‘Most children are mistreated. It’s the way of the world. Unless you’re lucky, like my brother. You were mistreated, so was I.’
‘Not like that.’
‘It’s all mistreatment.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll talk to Sebastian about the veterans.’
‘Thanks.’ She tried to sound grateful. Sandy grunted and bent his head to his plate.
He hadn’t approached her for sex since their row. The next afternoon, Barbara had gone down to the kitchen to speak to Pilar and on the stairs she had heard a laugh. Sandy was there, leaning on the table, smoking a cigarette and smiling, a lubricious smile. Pilar stood washing dishes at the sink, laughing too; when she caught sight of Barbara she blushed scarlet and bowed her head.
‘I’ve brought the shopping list, Pilar,’ Barbara said coldly. ‘I’ll leave it on the table.’
Afterwards she said nothing but he did. They were sitting in the salón and he sat back, twirling his whisky glass. He smiled. ‘Nice girl, Pilar. She can be quite cheeky sometimes.’
Barbara continued threading a needle. He’s doing this to punish me, she thought, as though I cared now. ‘How you men like to flirt with servants,’ she said lightly. ‘I suppose it’s a fantasy, a public-school thing.’
‘If you knew what some of my fantasies are,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t like them.’ Something in his tone made her look at him sharply. He looked at her coldly and took another swig of whisky.
‘I must get that pattern Mum sent,’ she said. She went out and stood in the hall, taking deep breaths. Sometimes she just had to get away from him. She would think, I’ll sit with him for an hour, then get out for a few minutes. And that’ll be another hour nearer getting away for good.
She went up to their bedroom. She didn’t need the pattern but supposed she had better take it. While she was there she unlocked the drawer in her bureau and fingered her bank book. She was glad the bureau had a good strong lock; she always kept the key in her pocket.
She took a deep breath. She would have to go back downstairs, try to calm things. She could ask him how things were going with Harry, whether Harry was joining this project, whatever it was. But if he insisted on using Pilar to mock her, let him. She would pretend to be hurt and that would be another excuse to avoid making love if he came near her again.
TO HER RELIEF Sandy didn’t mention Pilar again that evening. When she asked him about Harry he said he had invited him to dinner again on Thursday week. He got up, saying there was some paperwork he needed to sort out in his study. She sighed with relief as the door closed behind him.
Shortly afterwards she heard the telephone ring twice then suddenly stop; Sandy must have answered it on the study extension. It made her jump slightly; she started again a moment later as the doorbell rang loudly. Who on earth’s this, she thought, it’s getting late. She put down her sewing.
She heard Pilar come up from the kitchen, her heels clacking on the tiles. A minute later she knocked and entered the salón. Little as she cared what Sandy did now, Barbara felt a spurt of anger. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.
Pilar wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘If you please, señora, it is a man to see Señor Forsyth. He looks a little – ’ she hesitated – ‘foreign. I know Señor Forsyth does not like to be disturbed in his study.’
‘I’ll see who it is.’ She got up and walked past the girl. A blast of cold air came from the hall; Pilar had left the front door ajar. A small elderly man in a stained coat and a battered Homburg hat stood on the doorstep. He wore spectacles held together over the bridge of his nose with tape. He lifted his hat.
‘¿Perdon, señora, esta el señor Forsyth en casa?’ He spoke Spanish slowly and with effort, in a strong French accent. Barbara replied in French.
‘Yes. How can we help you?’
The old man’s face creased with relief. ‘Ah, you speak French. My Spanish is poor. I am sorry to disturb you. My name is Blanc, Henri Blanc, I have something I must give Señor Forsyth.’ He felt inside his coat, producing a little canvas bag. It made a chinking sound. Barbara stared in puzzlement.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I should explain. I am one of the refugees Señor Forsyth has been assisting.’
‘Oh, I see.’ That explained the down-at-heel clothes, the French accent. He was one of the Jews. She held the door open. ‘Please come in.’
The old man shook his head. ‘No, no, please. I do not wish to disturb you so late. Only I heard today I have my pass to go to Lisbon.’ He smiled, unable to conceal his delight. ‘I leave with my family early tomorrow. I could not go without bringing what I had promised.’ He proffered the bag again. ‘Please, take it. Tell him it is pure quality as I said. These have been in our family a long time but it is worth it to
get to Lisbon.’
‘All right.’ Barbara took the package. ‘You must have had a long walk – are you sure you won’t come in for a minute?’ She looked at his shoes, the heels were almost worn away, he had probably walked from France in them.
‘No, thank you. I must get back.’ He smiled. ‘But I had to keep my promise. Thank Señor Forsyth for me. We have been so worried; we hear the Germans are sending Republican refugees back from France and worry they may demand us in return. But now we will be safe, thanks to your husband.’ He reached out and shook her hand, then replaced his hat and turned, limping slowly down the drive.
Barbara closed the door. She saw a shadow at the top of the basement stairs and realized Pilar had been standing there listening. Was this how it was going to be with her from now on?
‘Pilar,’ she called sharply, ‘could you make me a chocolate please.’ The shadow jumped and the girl called, ‘Sí, señora.’ Her footsteps clumped rapidly down the steps to the kitchen. Barbara stood in the hall, weighing the bag in her hands. It wasn’t coins, it was something lighter. She went back into the salon and opened the drawstring. She tipped the contents into her palm.
There were rings and necklaces, a couple of brooches and some strangely shaped items that looked as though they might have a religious function. They were all gold, bright shiny gold. She frowned, puzzled.
She supposed she had better take the bag up to Sandy. She mounted the stairs slowly. The central heating hissed and gurgled in the quiet hallway. A light shone under the study door. She could hear him talking, he must still be on the telephone. She was about to knock but something in his tone stopped her. It reminded her of when he had mentioned his fantasies earlier.
‘He should be talking by now. You’ve had him all day. What have you done to him?’ There was silence, then Sandy’s voice again. ‘Those old Moroccan sweats are tough. He still says Gomez is his real name? Well, I suppose it makes sense, they’d have had to run up forged papers for a false name and that’s Gestapo territory.’ There was more silence, a couple of grunts acknowledging what the man at the other end was saying, then Sandy’s voice again, a harsh, angry edge to it. ‘I’ll leave it in your capable hands.’ He paused, then added, ‘There’re enough places around Santa Maria. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve Brett’s paperwork here. No, he trusts me. Yes. Adíos.’ There was a tinkle as he replaced the receiver.
The phrases rang in Barbara’s head. What have you done to him? Gestapo territory. And Harry was involved somehow. She stood there, heart thumping. She heard Sandy opening a drawer in his desk, a grunt. She swallowed and stepped quietly from the door, holding the canvas bag tightly. She would give it to him later.
In the salón Pilar had left a cup of chocolate on the sewing table. She sat down heavily, the bag in her lap. Just what the hell was Sandy involved in? She thought again of his taunt about his fantasies. He could be capable of anything, she thought; I’ve never really known him at all. She swallowed again and placed the bag on the sewing table. She stared at it, her body tensed, ears alert for his footstep outside.
Chapter Thirty-Two
SOFIA AND HARRY walked slowly through the Rastro crowds. It was Sunday, a cool cloudy day, and Madrid’s main street market was packed. The rickety wooden stalls with their awnings spilled into the narrow streets around Plaza de Cascorro. They were covered with junk of every imaginable variety – cheap ornaments, pieces of broken down machinery, canaries in wooden cages. Harry would have liked to take Sofia’s hand but that was now forbidden as immoral unless the couple were married. Pairs of guardias stood in doorways here and there, looking at the crowd with cold hard eyes.
It was exactly a week since they had made love in Harry’s flat. Since then they had managed to see each other most days. Harry had time on his hands; he had had no further instructions from the spies. Sofia would come round to his flat in the evenings, leaving early because of her early shifts at the dairy.
He was happy to be in love for the first time, happy that his orderly world had been turned upside down. When the latest letter from Will arrived he read of their problems with getting a cleaner for their house in the country, the children’s schooling, and felt unimaginably distant from his cousin’s world at the same time as he felt a warm rush of love for him.
There were secrets, though. Harry wanted nothing more than to tell Sofia about his work as a spy and how he hated it, how his only friend at the embassy had turned out to be his watcher: but he couldn’t and mustn’t. Sofia, meanwhile, had not told her family of their relationship. She said it wasn’t the right time. When she left Enrique to look after their mother and Paco in the early evenings she told him she went visiting one of the girls from the dairy. She didn’t seem to mind lying to her brother; Harry wondered whether perhaps families as close as theirs could only cope with that closeness by having secrets.
Today was Sofia’s weekly day off from the dairy. She had arranged for Enrique to stay at home to look after their mother and Paco.
They had made love at Harry’s flat and then Sofia suggested the Rastro. As they threaded their way through the crowds, Harry whispered to her. ‘You never smell of milk. Why don’t you smell of milk?’
She laughed. ‘What do I smell of?’
‘Just you. A clean smell.’
‘When I went to work there I promised myself I wouldn’t end up smelling like the others. There is a shower there; it is freezing cold and has a concrete floor with a broken metal drain you must be careful not to fall into, but I shower every day.’
‘No one will ever keep you down, will they?’
‘No.’ She smiled at him. ‘I hope not.’
They walked deeper into the crowds, laughing at some of the bizarre things up for sale, and passed into the part of the market that sold food. Most of the stalls were nearly empty, only a few dried-up vegetables here and there. A meat stall sold offal that Harry could smell six feet away but there was a queue waiting to buy it. Sofia saw his disgusted look.
‘People will buy anything now,’ she said. ‘The ration wouldn’t feed a dog.’
‘I know.’
‘Everyone is desperate. That’s why Enrique took that job, you know. He is a good man at heart, he didn’t want to be a spy.’
‘I wonder whether not being good at spying makes you a better man?’
‘Perhaps it does. People who are good at deceiving cannot be good people, can they? He is happier as a street cleaner.’
‘How is his leg?’
‘All right. He is still tired in the evenings, but that will get better. Señora Avila is disappointed. Now there is more income coming into the family she has lost one excuse to run to the priest with, that we cannot afford to care for Paco.’
He looked at her. ‘What was your uncle the priest like?’ he asked.
Sofia smiled sadly. ‘Mama and Papa moved from Tarancón to Madrid to find work when I was small and Uncle Ernesto went to a parish in Cuenca. Although my parents were Republicans they kept in touch, family is everything in Spain. We used to go and stay with Uncle Ernesto for a few days every summer when I was small. I remember being amazed by his sotana.’ She laughed. ‘I remember I asked my mother why Uncle wore a dress. But he was kind. He let me clean the candlesticks in the church. I would leave great finger-marks all over them, but he said it didn’t matter. He must have got one of his beatas to polish them again afterwards.’ She looked at Harry. ‘Since the war ended Mama has said one of us should go to Cuenca and see if he is still alive. But even if we could afford it I do not think it is a good idea. I heard bad stories of what happened to the priests and nuns there.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She grasped his hand for a moment, hidden by the press of the crowd. ‘At least I had a family to look after me. I wasn’t sent away to some school like you.’
Ahead of them the street broadened out. It was particularly busy here and Harry saw an unusual number of well-dressed customers crowded round a stall, their faces intent, frowning.
A pair of civiles stood in a doorway, watching.
‘What’s going on?’ Harry asked.
‘This is where all the things that were taken from the houses of the rich in 1936 end up,’ Sofia said. ‘The people who took them need the money for food so they sell them to the stallholders. Rich Madrileños come here to try to find their family heirlooms.’
They walked past the stalls. There were expensive-looking vases and dinner services, porcelain figures and even an old record-player with a silver horn. Harry read the inscription on it. ‘To Don Juan Ramirez Dávila from his colleagues at the Banco de Santander, 12.7.19.’ An elderly woman picked through a heap of brooches and mother-of-pearl necklaces. ‘We’ll never find it, Dolores,’ her husband murmured wearily. ‘You have to forget about it.’
Harry picked up a porcelain figure of a woman in eighteenth-century dress, her nose chipped. ‘Some of these probably meant a lot to someone once.’
‘They were bought with money stolen from the people,’ Sofia replied, a harshness in her voice.
They passed on to a table with a huge pile of photographs. People were crowded around sorting through them, and here the faces were sad, stricken, some looking frantic as they delved through the piles.
‘Where did all these come from?’ Harry asked.
‘Photographs would be taken from the frames when they were sold. People come here looking for photographs of their families.’
Some of the photos were recent, some half a century old. Wedding photographs, family portraits, black and white and sepia. A young man in a military uniform, smiling into the camera; a young couple sitting outside a taverna hand in hand. Harry realized many of them must be dead now. No wonder these people were looking so intently; here they might find the only image left of a lost son or brother.
