Jack Ludlow - A Broken Land

But if Cal, as one of his company officers, had been required to discipline and demote Vince, he had also come to appreciate the feeling of having him alongside when things got sticky, because he was a real asset in a scrap, as well as a born leader in an army, like every other in the world, that could only run well by the application of its senior NCOs.

He had also been a very handy welterweight boxer, both for the regiment and after he was discharged. Such a skill made leniency when he transgressed easy to get past the colonel, an old stick-in-the-mud and martinet going nowhere, the army always being tolerant of those showing sporting prowess, especially one who could duff up the champion of a rival regiment. He was past boxing now, a trainer instead of a fighter, if you excluded going out into the streets of London to do battle with Mosley’s blackshirts.

‘So what do you reckon, guv?’ Vince asked, turning to indicate the party of which he had obviously taken charge. ‘The lads want to know.’

‘Depends on how bad it gets. If it is really serious we’ll need to bail out.’

‘If this is what you told me it might be, an’ that’s what I passed on to the boys when we heard the shooting, then if there’s going to be a fight, quite a few of them want to be part of it.’

‘Hold on a minute, Vince, we’re talking a shooting war here, not three rounds with gloves and headgear on. Besides, they’re only kids.’

‘What age were you when you went and joined up?’

‘I’d had training.’

‘I recall you saying if you’d listened to the instructors you wouldn’t have lasted a bleedin’ week.’

Vince had a real boxer’s face: a much-broken nose and prominent bones on his cheeks and under his scarred eyebrows; now it was screwed up with what seemed to be real passion, not his normal mode of behaviour, which was generally calm and jocular. The one thing that could get him really going was anything to do with fascism.

That was why he was here with his boxers — it set him off at home and it fired him up when he talked, which he did rarely, of his political beliefs. Not in any way a joiner of parties, he was, by his very nature, a fellow who believed all men are created equal and should be treated as such.

‘We came here to send a message to that shit Hitler, right?’

‘Yes, but-’

‘But, nothin’! If the same sort of bastards are going to try and turn Spain into another Germany or Italy, are we just goin’ to scuttle off home an’ let them get on with it?’

‘I was going to say it’s not our fight, Vince, but I suspect that might not go down too well.’

‘It is, guv, and you know it,’ Vince responded, deeply serious. ‘It’s all our fight, just as it was in Africa.’

The two locked eyes, but it was not a contest of wills, more an attempt to ascertain the next move. If anyone knew him well it was this man, and added to the mutual trust they had was the bond of recent experience; Vince had been with him all the way in the acquiring and running of guns, across Europe and into Ethiopia, sharing the risks as well as, it had to be admitted, often acting as the voice of common sense.

‘What about your gym?’

‘A few weeks won’t make no difference, will it, and we was due to be here a fortnight in any case. Might all be over by then.’

‘We don’t know what is happening, Vince, or how we can help. We don’t even know if we’d be welcome.’

‘One way to find out.’

‘March to the sound of the guns?’ Cal asked, only half joking.

‘That would be a start.’

‘Can I talk to your boys?’

Vince nodded and Cal went towards them. He was not a total stranger, having attended the training sessions both indoors and at the track-and-field stadium, yet right at that moment it came home to him how little he really knew about them, and that extended to names. He had remained semi-detached to that in which they were involved, partly through a disassociation from their politics, added to a lack of interest, more through being too busy with his own pleasures.

‘Vince tells me some of you want to get involved.’ He needed to put up his hand to kill off a murmur from several dozen angry throats and the odd shaking fist. ‘I can understand how you feel and I think Vince will tell you that I am experienced at this sort of thing …’

He had to stop then, there being nothing he could add which did not risk sounding boastful, so he turned to Florencia, who, unusually for her, had remained silent, albeit with a fixed pout, while he had talked with Vince, who was not going to be forgiven for the way he had not only ignored her, but cut her off from her man.

‘Florencia, we need to find out what is really going on, not just rumours, and we will need your help if we contact anyone in authority. What I am saying is we need you.’

The pout disappeared and her eyes flashed as she responded. ‘You’re going to fight with us?’

‘We’re not going to just sit on our arse and do nowt, sweetheart,’ Vince growled, good-humouredly and with a smile. ‘Of course we’re goin’ to fight.’

Cal Jardine was used to Florencia suddenly leaping to throw her arms and legs around him, then showering him with kisses; Vince was not and it showed in his rapidly reddening face, especially when the act was accompanied by a whole raft of whistles and whoops from the athletes, and more especially, his young boxers.

‘Right, boys,’ Cal yelled, over the din, looking at feet in an array of unsuitable footwear, in fact a lot of plimsolls. ‘Get back to your billets and collect your kit and shaving gear, a change of clothes, especially spare socks and the means to wash them, a knapsack if you’ve got one and a blanket, even if you have to buy it. If you have boots, wear them and don’t load yourself up with things you don’t need. You might not be coming back to where you are now sleeping, so bring any money or valuables you have as well, and everyone has to have a hat.’

He paused, watching as that sank in, looking for signs of doubt; there was not one who did not seem still determined.

‘Back here in an hour and be warned — I will inspect you and chuck in the gutter anything I think you don’t need. Some of those who came to the Olympiad will want to get out, so ask them to gather here as well. This will be our rendezvous point till we find out how the land lies.’

Taking Florencia by the arm, he headed back towards the centre of the city. Vince, professional as he was, had already got together the kit he knew he needed and was on their heels.

The crowds were no longer just milling about; as an indication of how serious matters had become many were busy building barricades and doing so with an impressive professionalism. Instead of just a jumble of various artefacts hastily thrown together, they were being constructed with care, a bus or a truck the centrepiece, the paving stones ripped up from the streets not just thrown in a rising heap, but laid carefully and angled, so that any shot striking them would ricochet upwards and over instead of smashing them to pieces, with rifle slots at the crest, offset for aiming right and left to protect the men who would use them.

Florencia explained, when Cal expressed his admiration, that such skill was honed by experience, Barcelona being a city well versed in the mechanics of revolt, not least in an event they called the Semana Tragica — twenty-five years past but still a beacon for socialist memory — when the government, the army and the Civil Guard, using artillery, had crushed a major uprising.

The workers would not make the same mistakes of shoddy construction now as they had made then; the barricades were designed to cope with such assaults. At the same time, lorries and cars, horns blaring, flags flying, armed men on top, were racing around the city carrying food, some already with makeshift armour plating fixed to windscreens and sides.