C. Sansom - Winter in Madrid

Hoare leaned forward, his face a mask of outraged fury. ‘And they want you too, Brett, for murder!’ He turned and pointed at Barbara. ‘And you!’ She blinked at him in surprise. The ambassador’s voice rose. ‘I’ve phoned one of our friends in the government. They know all about it, that civil came back to the glade and found a bloodbath. His superiors went to El Pardo. They’ve had to wake the Generalísimo! Hell!’ he shouted. ‘I should let them have the pair of you, letı them put you up against a wall and shoot you!’ His voice trembled. ‘A government minister shot dead!’

‘It was the man Piper who did that,’ Hillgarth said quietly. ‘They don’t really want Brett and Miss Clare, Sam, Franco doesn’t want a major diplomatic incident now. Think about it, they could have picked them up on the way but they let them come here.’

Hoare turned back to Harry, a tic in his cheek making one eye blink spasmodically. ‘I could have you charged with treason, young man, I could have you sent home to jail!’ He ran a hand though his hair. ‘I should have been Viceroy of India, Winston all but promised me! I should have been Viceroy, not dealing with this madness, this rubbish, these fools! This is a fine thing for this new man on the Madrid desk in London – what’s his name—’

‘Philby,’ Hillgarth said. ‘Kim Philby.’

‘A fine thing for Philby to have to deal with! And Winston will blame me!’

‘All right, Sam,’ Hillgarth said soothingly.

‘It is not all right!’

Barbara asked in a quiet voice, ‘Please, can you tell me how Bernie is? Please. This is his blood, we brought him from Cuenca, please tell me.’

Hoare made an impatient gesture. ‘The doctor’s having him removed to hospital, he needs a blood transfusion. Let’s hope they’ve got the equipment, I’m damned if I’m sending him to a private clinic. If he comes through he may not be able to use his left leg again, nerve damage or something.’ The ambassador frowned at her. ‘And if he doesn’t make it, so far as I’m concerned it’d be good riddance! A major diplomatic incident over a bloody Red terrorist! At least we don’t have to worry about the other one, the Spanish woman they killed.’

Barbara jerked back in her chair, as though struck. A momentary look of satisfaction crossed the ambassador’s face and that did something final to Harry, all the pain and grief and anger welled up in him and he cried out and launched himself across the room at Hoare and fixed his hands round the ambassador’s scrawny neck. Squeezing that dry skin, feeling the tendons give under his grip, filled him with a tremendous sense of release. Hoare’s face reddened and his mouth opened. Harry could see right down the throat of His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador on Special Mission to the Court of Generalísimo Francisco Franco. Hoare’s arms fluttered weakly as he tried toı grip Harry’s shoulders.

Then he heard Barbara cry ‘Look out!’ and felt a terrific blow on his neck. It stunned him and made him relax his grip. He looked round dazedly and saw it was Tolhurst who had hit him, Tolhurst who was dragging him off the ambassador with surprising strength, his face horrified. Hoare had fallen back in his chair, retching and gagging, two angry red weals standing out on his throat.

Harry felt dizzy. His legs buckled. As he fell to the floor he caught a strange expression on Hillgarth’s face, something almost admiring. Perhaps he thinks it’s all an adventure, Harry thought, just before he blacked out.

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.