Winter in Madrid

Epilogue

Croydon, May 1947

THE SCHOOL WAS in a leafy suburb of mock-Tudor houses. Barbara walked from the station down a succession of tree-lined streets, through the spring sunshine. The briefcase with her papers for the meeting was slung over her shoulder. The stockbroker belt, she thought. Even here there were scars: bombsites overgrown with grass and weeds.

She heard the school before she saw it, a cacophony of boyish voices growing stronger. She walked along the side of a high brick wall until she came to a gateway with a big sign outside, the name Haverstock School in black letters under a coat of arms. In the asphalt playground in front of the imposing Victorian building, dozens of boys were talking, running, shouting. They wore black-and-whitestriped blazers and caps with the school crest. She remembered Bernie telling her once that school coats of arms were fake, only aristocrats were allowed real coats of arms.

She walked through the throng to the main door. The boys ignored her; she had to step aside to avoid a game of football that came a little too close. ‘Give us the ball, Chivers,’ someone called. They all had upper-class accents, drawing out their vowels. Barbara wondered what they were like to teach. In a far corner a fight was going on, two boys rolling over and punching each other while a crowd egged them on. She averted her eyes.

She stepped into a wide oak-beamed entrance hall with a stage at one end. It was empty; everyone seemed to be outside enjoying the sun. It was a grand setting, very different to the narrow painted corridors of her old grammar school, although the faint pervasive tang of disinfectant was the same. A new war memorial had been put up on one side of the stage, the brass shining, the inscription 1939–45 above a list of names. The list was shorter than that on the 1914–18 memorial on the other side; but long enough.

Harry had told her the way to his classroom in his letter. She found the corridor and followed the numbered doors until she came to 14A. She could see him through a window, sitting at his desk marking papers. She knocked and went in.

He stood up and smiled. ‘Barbara, how nice to see you.’ He was dressed in a tweed jacket with patches at the elbows, like a caricature schoolmaster, and he had put on a lot of weight; he had a double chin now. There were flecks of grey in his black hair now; like her he was approaching forty.

She shook his hand. ‘Hello, Harry. Gosh, it’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?’

‘Nearly a year,’ he said. ‘Too long.’

She looked round the classroom: posters of the Eiffel Tower, tables of French irregular verbs, rows of scuffed desks. ‘So this is where you teach.’

‘Yes, this is where the French master lives. French masters have a reputation for being easy targets, you know.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes.’ Harry gestured at the cane lying across his desk. ‘I have to use that sometimes to remind them who’s boss, unfortunately. Come on, let’s go and get some lunch. There’s a nice little pub not far from here.’

They left the building and walked back to the town centre. The trees were in blossom. As they passed a cherry tree the warm breeze shook off a cloud of white petals that drifted around them, making Barbara think of snow.

‘D’you teach any Spanish?’ she asked.

‘There’s no call for it. Just French. They learn just about enough for a few phrases to stick.’ He gestured at her briefcase with a smile. ‘You’re the Spanish expert these days. Who is it you’re meeting at Croydon airport?’

‘Oh, a crowd of businessmen from Argentina. They’ve come over with Eva Perón’s European tour and they’re flying here from Paris to look at trade opportunities. Tinned beef and meat products, not very exciting.’

When they had returned to England in 1940 Barbara had taken work interpreting and translating in Spanish. The money had helped during the long period of nursing Bernie back to health. They had said he would never walk properly again but with endless determination he had proved them wrong. When they married at the end of 1941 he had been able to walk down the aisle unaided, without a limp despite the bullet lodged in his femur. That eased her guilt, for she knew that if she hadn’t called out to Bernie in the field, Maestre would never have had time to reach for his gun.

‘Still working with the refugees?’ Harry asked her.

‘Yes. It’s mostly academics now, the resistance is pretty well beaten. I’m teaching a writer from Madrid English at the moment.’ She glanced at him. ‘Any news of Enrique and Paco?’

Harry’s face softened into a smile. ‘I had a letter last month, I don’t hear so often now. Paco’s starting work labouring for a local farmer.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘Sixteen. I never thought he’d make it but he has. Enrique says he still doesn’t talk much, but he enjoys working.’

‘Enrique saved him.’

‘Yes.’

After the massacre Barbara and Bernie and Harry had been bundled out of Spain on the first plane. As soon as they were back in England Harry had written to Enrique; he did not even know if Sofia’s brother had been told what had happened to her. A few weeks later a reply came from Asturias, in the north of Spain: the guardias had come to tell Enrique Sofia was dead and that night Enrique had packed a couple of suitcases, taken Paco to the station and caught a train to the north. He had thrown himself on the mercy of distant relatives who kept a small farm near Palencia. They had taken them in and Enrique and Paco had been there ever since. Harry sent them money every so often. They barely scratched a living but Enrique said the countryside was peaceful and quiet and that was what Paco had needed. He was better, though Enrique thought he would never leave the village. He had escaped the orphanage, unlike Carmela Mera. Carmela would be in her late teens now, Barbara thought. If she had lived. It was one of the things she tried not to think about. She shook her head to clear it.

‘It’s a shame to let the language go,’ she told Harry. ‘You should get some practice.’

‘Oh, I’m happy enough just doing French.’ He gave her a sad tight smile. ‘I had to let a lot of things go when they wouldn’t take me back at Cambridge.’

‘That was so unfair.’

‘Hoare’s revenge,’ Harry said flatly. ‘They were crying out for Fellows back then.’

‘Yes. And they didn’t like Bernie trying to get the papers to publish the truth about the Spanish camps.’

‘He was naive. He should have known they’d put a D-notice on the story.’

‘Have you thought of trying again? I mean, it’s been nearly seven years.’ Barbara hesitated. ‘I don’t think they’re keeping tabs on me any more.’ For years after she returned she noticed her mail had been opened, the flaps stuck down crudely, and sometimes there were strange noises on her telephone. Harry had experienced the same things.

‘Will says once you’re on a blacklist you stay on it.’ He paused. ‘Besides, I’m happy enough at Haverstock.’

‘I sometimes wonder,’ she said, and then paused.

‘What?’

‘Seeing the new war memorial there reminded me. I wonder if Bernie’s name is on the memorial at Rookwood.’

Bernie had been called up in 1943, after he was certified fit. With all his injuries he could probably have got out of it but he didn’t try, he wanted to fight fascism again. He had died on D-Day, the sixth of June 1944, shot down as he struggled ashore on Juno beach. In the car on the way to Madrid he had told Barbara he would never leave her again, but he had. She saw now that a man like him, in the times they lived in, would always go to fight. But she still longed for him, and for the child they had never had.

‘Did you see Hoare’s published his memoirs?’ Harry asked.

‘Has he?’

‘Viscount Templewood now, of course.’ Harry laughed bitterly. ‘Ambassador on Special Mission. He says Franco stayed out of the war entirely because of his own firm diplomacy. No mention of Hillgarth, of course. Memoirs of the pink rat.’

They reached the pub, a large place that served lunches. It was full of salesmen. As he led Barbara to a table Harry nodded to a couple of people at the bar.

‘The food’s not bad. When do you have to be at the airport?’

‘Not until four. Oodles of time.’

They ordered steak and kidney pudding. It was overcooked and gristly but Harry didn’t seem to mind.

‘So work’s keeping you busy?’ he asked.

‘Yes, work and the refugees.’

She studied him; he had a nasty shaving cut on his chin. ‘What do you do these days, apart from teaching? What happened with that woman teacher you got friendly with?’

He shrugged. ‘Oh, that fizzled out. I don’t do much really, apart from teach.’

‘Work’s my life too, I suppose. And the refugees. I thought I might do a part-time degree in Spanish.’

Harry nodded. ‘Good idea. You’d probably find it easy.’

‘I’d have to cut back on the refugee work.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve ended up one of those do-gooding single women. I always thought I would.’

‘I suppose at least we’ve got memories,’ Harry said, but his eyes were bleak. He smiled tightly again. ‘I’m thinking of giving up my digs and living in at Haverstock. Will’s son’s at Haverstock now, you know. Ronnie. Bright lad. Coming up to the sixth form. Looks like his dad. They couldn’t afford the Rookwood fees in the end.’

‘Are Will and Muriel still in Italy?’

‘Yes. I miss Will, especially since Uncle James died.’ That tight smile again. ‘Muriel hates it. Rome’s too hot and dusty for her, she wants a Paris posting.’

Barbara pushed the horrible food around her plate. ‘Wouldn’t moving in make you a bit – well – cut off from the world?’

‘What’s so marvellous about the world? Anyway, teaching’s what I do now. Might as well go the whole hog. It gets boring sometimes but I’m used to it. And you can help a boy now and again, that makes it worthwhile.’

‘Bernie used to say public school was a closed world. A privileged world.’

He looked up sharply. ‘I know. Sofia wouldn’t have approved either.’

She took a deep breath. ‘No, they wouldn’t, but that’s not what I meant. You were angry when we came back from Spain, you wanted to do things. You seem to have – well – turned in on yourself.’

‘What is there to do?’ The bitter smile again. ‘What have either of us done?’

‘At least I help the refugees. After I came back I thought I might do something political, there was something – something Bernie said in the car.’ She heard the words again in her head, and sighed. ‘He let his Communist Party membership lapse. He’d become disillusioned with them, but he still had the principles he’d always had. But – it’s not as if we can change things in Spain. I suppose at least things are better here, with Labour in.’

Harry grimaced. ‘Are they? Who owned everything before the war? The people who went to schools like Haverstock. And who owns everything now? It’s the same.’

‘Then why do you stay there?’ she asked. She felt angry with him, sitting there stoically eating the revolting food, already looking like some dusty old bachelor.

‘Because you can’t really change anything,’ he said wearily. ‘They’re all too strong, they beat you down in the end.’

‘I don’t believe that. You have to fight.’

‘I lost,’ he said simply.

THEY SPOKE LITTLE during the rest of the meal. Harry apologized for not walking her to the bus, but he had a class. They shook hands and promised to meet again but Barbara knew somehow that they wouldn’t, this was the last time. When they were together it was probably the only time they spoke of Bernie and Sofia and that seemed to cause more pain, not less, as the years passed. On the bus she found tears pricking at her eyes but she blinked them away. She opened her briefcase and forced herself to read the details about the people she was meeting, their names and the companies they represented. Señor Gomez, Señor Barrancas, Señor Grazziani. A lot of Argentines had Italian names; immigrants, she supposed.

At the airport she was met by a representative from the London Chamber of Commerce, a tall urbane man with a Guards tie who introduced himself as Gore-Brown. There were half a dozen businessmen with him. ‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know there would be so many in your group. There are only four Argentines. You’ll have to take turns, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m told one or two of them speak English. A lot of Argentines do, I believe.’

‘Oh well, we’ll see how we get on.’ Barbara adopted the jolly, confident-spinster manner she used with men like these. She hoped she would be all right with the difficult, lisping Argentine accent.

‘The plane’s just about to land, I believe,’ Gore-Brown said. ‘We could go up to the departure lounge and watch.’

‘Oh, that’d be good,’ one of the businessmen said. ‘I’ve never seen a plane land before.’

‘You can tell you weren’t in the RAF,’ a red-faced man with a handlebar moustache said.

‘Five years on the battleships, old boy. Shot down a few, but I’ve never seen one land.’

Laughing, the group mounted the stairs to the observation deck. A large window gave on to the tarmac. A couple of planes stood there, passengers disembarking.

‘Here she comes,’ the navy man said, and Barbara looked as a twinengined plane, surprisingly small, slid on to the runway and taxied slowly towards them. She took the papers from her briefcase. Gore-Brown leaned over her. ‘Which one’s the Fray Bentos man?’ he asked.

‘Barrancas.’

‘Jolly good. Make sure you put me next to him. There could be some good business in this for me. I’m in distribution. You can make a lot off the meat ration.’ He winked.

The plane had halted. A couple of overalled men slid steps on wheels up to the door. It opened and a little group of men descended the steps. They all had sunburned faces and wore hats and heavy overcoats; England must seem very cold, Barbara thought.

She squinted, adjusting her glasses. There was something familiar about the last man in the group. He hung back a little, looking round as though fascinated by his surroundings. She stepped to the glass and peered out.

Gore-Brown joined her. ‘That last man, that’s Barrancas. They sent me a photo. He’s one of the English speakers, I think.’

But his name wasn’t really Barrancas, Barbara knew. She knew that stocky form, bulkier now and with a stoop, that hard heavy-featured face, the Clark Gable moustache. She watched as Sandy Forsyth walked across the tarmac towards them, smiling like an eager curious schoolboy as he lifted his face to the sunny English afternoon.