C. Sansom - Winter in Madrid

‘Yes. It was bad enough then but it looks worse now. Even poorer.’

‘Maybe things’ll get better. I suppose at least now there’s strong government.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Did you hear what Dalí said – Spain’s a nation of peasants who need a firm hand? Cuba was the same, they just can’t handle democracy. Everything goes to pot.’ Tolhurst shook his head, as though it was all beyond him. Harry felt a spurt of anger at his naiveté, then reflected that it was beyond him too, the tragedy that had happened here. Bernie was the one who had had all the answers but his side had lost and Bernie was dead.

‘Coffee?’ he asked Tolhurst. ‘If there is any.’

‘Oh yes, place is stocked. And there’s a phone, but be careful what you say, it’ll be tapped as you’re Dip Corps. Same with letters home, they’re censored. So take care if you’re writing to family, or a girlfriend. Got anyone back home?’ he added diffidently.

Harry shook his head. ‘No. You?’

‘No. They don’t let me out of the embassy much.’ Tolhurst looked at him curiously. ‘What took you to Carabanchel, when you were here before?’

‘I came with Bernie Piper. My Communist schoolfriend.’ Harry smiled wryly. ‘I’m sure it’s in my file.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ Tolhurst reddened slightly.

‘He got friendly with a family down there. They were good people; Christ knows what’s happened to them now.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll get that coffee.’

Tolhurst looked at his watch. ‘Actually, I’d better not. Got to check some damned expenses. Come to the embassy at nine tomorrow, we’ll show you the ropes for the translators.’

‘Will the other translators know I’m working for Hillgarth?’

Tolhurst shook his head. ‘Lord, no. They’re all regular Dip Corps, just performers in Sam’s circus.’ He laughed and extended a damp hand to Harry. ‘It’s all right, we’ll run through it all tomorrow.’

HARRY TOOK OFF his collar and tie, feeling a welcome current of air playing on the damp ring around his neck. He sat in a leather armchair and looked through Forsyth’s file. There wasn’t much there: some more photographs, details of his work with Auxilio Social, his contacts in the Falange. Sandy was living in a big house, paying liberally for black market goods.

Outside he heard a woman’s voice, harsh, calling her children in. He put down the file and walked over to the window, looking through the washing to the shadowy courtyard, where children were playing. He opened the windows, the old familiar smell of cooking mingled with rot striking his nostrils. He could see the woman leaning out, she was young and pretty but wore a widow’s black. She called her children again and they ran indoors.

Harry turned back to the room. It was poorly lit and seemed full of gloomy corners, the places where pictures or posters had been removed standing out as ghostly squares. He wondered what had hung there. Pictures of Lenin and Stalin? There was something oppressive about the still, quiet atmosphere. The Communist would have been taken after Franco occupied Madrid, hauled away and shot in a cellar probably. Harry switched on the light but nothing happened. The light in the hall was the same; probably a power cut.

He had been uneasy about spying on Sandy but now he felt a growing anger. Sandy was working with Falangists, people who wanted to make war against England. ‘Why, Sandy?’ he asked aloud. His voice in the silence startled him. He felt suddenly alone. He was in a hostile country, working for an embassy that seemed to be a hotbed of rivalries. Tolhurst couldn’t have been friendlier but Harry guessed he would be reporting his impressions of him to Hillgarth, taking pleasure in being in the know. He thought of Hillgarth telling him to treat this as an adventure, and wondered, as he had wondered from time to time during his training, if he was the right man for this job, if he was up to it. He had said nothing about his doubts: it was an important job and they needed him to do it. For a second, though, he felt panic clutch at the corners of his mind.

This won’t do, he told himself. There was a radio on a table in the corner and he switched it on. The glass panel in the centre lit up; the power must be back on. He remembered when he was at his uncle’s, on holiday from Rookwood, playing with the radio in the sitting room in the evening. Twiddling the dial, he would hear voices from far-off countries: Italy, Russia, Hitler’s harsh screech from Germany. He had wished he could understand the voices that came and went, so far away, interrupted by swishes and crackles. His interest in languages had begun there. Now he twiddled the dial, looking for the BBC, but could find only a Spanish station playing martial music.

He wandered through to the bedroom. The bed had been freshly made up and he lay down, suddenly tired; it had been a long day. Now the playing children had gone he was struck again by the silence outside, it was as though Madrid lay under a shroud. An occupied city, Tolhurst had said. He could hear the blood hissing in his ears. It seemed louder in his bad one. He thought of unpacking, but let his mind drift back, to 1931, his first visit to Madrid. He and Bernie, twenty years old, arriving at Atocha station on a July day, rucksacks on their backs. He remembered emerging from the soot-smelling station into blazing sunlight, and there was the red-yellow-purple flag of the Republic flying over the Agriculture Ministry opposite, outlined against a cobalt-blue sky so bright he had to screw up his eyes.

AFTER SANDY FORSYTH left Rookwood in disgrace, Bernie returned to the study and his friendship with Harry resumed: two quiet, studious boys working for their Cambridge entrance. Bernie tended to keep his political views to himself in those days. He made the rugby XV in his last year and enjoyed the rough, speedy brutality of the field. Harry preferred cricket; when he made the first eleven it was one of the high points of his life.

Seven people from that year’s sixth form sat the Cambridge entrance. Harry came second and Bernie first, winning the £50 prize donated by an Old Boy. Bernie said it was more money than he had ever imagined seeing, let alone owning. In the autumn they went to Cambridge together but to different colleges and their paths diverged, Harry mixing with a serious, studious set and Bernie off with the socialist groups, bored with his studies. They still met for a drink now and then but less often as time passed. Harry hadn’t seen Bernie for over a month when he breezed into his rooms one summer morning at the end of their second year.

‘What’re you doing these hols?’ he asked once Harry had made tea.

‘I’m going to France. It’s been decided. I’m going to spend the summer travelling around, trying to get fluent. My cousin Will and his wife were going to come to start with, for their holidays, but she’s expecting.’ He sighed; it had been a disappointment and he was nervous of travelling alone. ‘Are you going to work in the shop again?’

‘No. I’m going to Spain for a month. They’re doing some great things there.’ Harry was reading Spanish as a second language; he knew the monarchy had fallen that April. A Republic had been declared, with a government of liberals and socialists dedicated, they said, to bringing reform and progress to one of Europe’s most backward countries.

‘I want to see it,’ Bernie said. His face shone with enthusiasm. ‘This new constitution’s a people’s constitution, it’s the end for the landlords and the church.’ He looked at Harry thoughtfully. ‘But I don’t really want to go to Spain alone, either. I wondered if you’d like to come. After all, you speak the language, why not go and see Spain too, see it first hand instead of reading dusty old Spanish playwrights? I could come to France first if you don’t want to be on your own,’ Bernie added. ‘I’d like to see it. Then we could go on to Spain.’ He smiled. Bernie was always persuasive.