Jack Ludlow - A Broken Land

Cal spun round to see Juan Luis Laporta spin sideways. Worse, Florencia was beside him and she seemed to jerk, then shrink to the ground as he set off towards her as fast as he could. The feeling of the bullet hitting him was like a branding, not a pain, and as it turned him he was vaguely aware that just to his left, bullets were raking the ground; he looked to his right just as one of the firers was upset by panic, and found himself looking to the line of buildings. There was someone there, a vague shape that seemed familiar.

A second bullet took his shoulder, dropping him to his knees, and now he was crawling towards an inert Florencia and Laporta on his hands and knees, his head drooping. All around were cries and shouting, with people running in every direction to what seemed like little purpose. He did get to Florencia and he was sure he said her name, but there was no response and he passed out.

The antiseptic smell registered first and then, slowly, he opened his eyes. Above his head was a slow circulating ceiling fan and he knew he was in the Barcelona Ritz, yet when he reached out to touch Florencia, not only was she not there but the edge of the bed was too close to his hand. The stains on the ceiling where water had penetrated were wrong, not the sort of thing to be tolerated by the manager of a luxury hotel; but then, it came back to him, there had been fighting.

Turning his head he saw not blonde, tousled hair but another head swathed in bandages a few feet away, in a bed that was near to touching his own; the same on the other side, though the man in that was lying, eyes closed, in seeming contented sleep. That was when the first of the pain kicked in, a dull throb in his shoulder, and there was another, less significant, in his belly. Confused, the head of the nurse, leaning over him and smiling, was what finally told Callum Jardine he was in hospital, and one that was very crowded.

* * *

‘You nearly didn’t make it, old buddy; you lost a lot of blood and it was touch and go if they could get enough back into you to keep you alive. I couldn’t carry you, and if I had not had Ernie Hemingway to help me you would be meat. He’s a big strong guy and not too many people seemed to care about you — they were trying to save their own.’

Tyler Alverson said this to a patient now sitting in a state of some shock; the first question he asked the American got a slow and sad shake of the head — Florencia had been dead on arrival at the forward dressing station, and it took some time for that to sink in and to ask about Juan Luis Laporta. He had died on the operating table from a single bullet that had passed though his chest and lungs.

Both bodies had been taken back to Barcelona for burial in the cemetery at Montjuic. The whole of the city did not turn out for Florencia, the great crowd came to bury Juan Luis Laporta, but she basked in the glory of every anarchist who could walk being at her graveside too, and many of the flowers were split between the two plots.

‘The official story is it was accidental discharge, a weapon going off that shouldn’t, some schmuck forgetting to put on his safety catch.’

‘You believe that?’

‘If I don’t, Cal, I’m in no position to do anything about it.’

‘You could tell the world.’

‘And get thrown out of Spain for something I’m not sure of? No thanks. Besides, it might have just been someone who didn’t want to die. You said yourself the attacks Laporta was pressing on with were crazy. OK, a lot of people would have been happy to see him dead, but there are too many conspiracies out there to go adding another one, and that would be about someone, I hate to remind you, the world knows nothing about.’

Cal knew he was in a rear area, the town of Tarancon, that he had been in a coma for three weeks and the doctor, a German socialist, had told him that the Battle for Madrid had fizzled out with neither side really able to claim victory. The city was still under threat but Franco had lost too many men to press home a new assault, especially in winter. The Republicans and the Nationalists were regrouping.

Alverson pulled a bottle of Johnnie Walker from his bag and handed it over. ‘Ernie says to have this, it cures everything, and to remind you that you are due to go hunting and fishing with him as soon as the war is over.’

‘Some pain in the ass, Tyler.’

‘Yep, but then you don’t compete with the big soft bastard.’

‘Thank him for me, for everything. Tell him I’d give him another medal if I had one.’

‘Look, I sent word to London, to Vince, and he got in contact with your wife.’

‘Who rushed to my bedside,’ Cal said bitterly, then regretted it. Lizzie hated blood, hated hospitals, and half the time probably hated him for all the grief he had caused her. The idea of a woman who jumped three feet when a balloon burst coming to a war zone was risible.

‘Vince told some guy called Peter Lanchester, who I am asked to cable to say you are out of the woods, but I figure that’s your call.’

‘Doctor says I can try getting out of bed tomorrow.’

‘What you should do is get out of Spain.’

‘And ruin your scoop?’

‘There will be others, Cal, and you …’ Alverson did not finish that, but there was no doubting what he felt; going after those weapons could see him killed ‘… well, it ain’t worth it.’

‘Tell me what’s happening, everything.’

‘You planning to go home?’

‘Just tell me,’ Cal replied, so impatiently it supplied an answer to the previous question.

The truth was, not a lot was happening on the original front; it was trenches on both sides before Madrid — with Cal opining that at least they had learnt — the Nationalists holding nearly all of the western suburbs but unable to advance; likewise the defenders, who had dug in where they had no other method and erected near-impenetrable barricades in the working-class districts.

The city was being bombed daily and life was getting harder. A Nationalist assault to the north, an attempt to get across the Corunna Road, had ended up with another set of International Brigades being thrown into a mincing machine, but the enemy casualties were nearly as bad, and given the appalling weather conditions, it was no surprise the battle had descended into a stalemate.

Germany and Italy having recognised Franco’s government the previous November, the Italians had sent ground troops in divisional strength, though they were billed as volunteers, and the supplies from the fascist dictators were pouring in through Portugal, despite a protest to the League of Nations. The democracies were still observing an embargo.

‘The talk is we are in for a long haul.’

‘Do Florencia’s parents know?’

‘No idea.’

‘I need a pen and paper, Tyler, that’s a letter I have to write.’

‘You got it. I will try to stay in touch, but if the front moves so must I.’

‘You forget, I always know how to find you.’

Writing his first letter was painful, a tacit admission that Florencia was no more, even if he knew it to be true. The reply came with a photograph of her on the day she had joined the Mujeres Libres , which for the first time produced tears, not many, it was not his way, but a reflection of the depth of his feelings of loss.

Replies came from other letters: from Lizzie, ordering him home, from Vince just wishing him well and from Peter Lanchester saying basically, but kindly, he had been asking for it and if there was anything he needed, etc. Monty Redfern, typically, offered to send a private ambulance all the way to Spain if he wanted one.

Recovery was slow, at first the mere act of walking a shuffling struggle, but as his strength began to return, Jardine began to exercise, gently at first, but with an incremental daily increase. The hospital he left as quickly as the doctor would allow, beds being at a premium, and he found a room in a house to rent, one abandoned by a supporter of the generals, though he did not ask if the family had got away or been shot, and it was there that Christmas passed and a new year arrived.