Derek Lambert - The Gate of the Sun

‘Cambridge, where is that?’

‘In England,’ Adam told him. ‘In East Anglia. It has a bridge over a river called the Cam. There are many colleges there. One of them, Trinity, was founded, refounded rather, by Henry VIII. Have you heard of him?’

‘He had many wives,’ Chimo said. ‘He must have been a stupid king.’

‘He chopped some of their heads off.’

‘Not so stupid,’ Chimo said. ‘At Cambridge they taught you to speak with a city voice.’

‘The purest in Spain. Castilian.’

‘Tell that to a Basque; tell that to a Catalan,’ said Chimo who spoke with a broad Andaluz accent.

The rain seeped through the blanket on to Adam’s rifle, a 7 mm Spanish Mauser. He turned his head and noticed minerals, quartz probably, shining wetly in the hills.

‘Catalan,’ Adam said. ‘Basque. Communist, Anarchist, Trotskyist … That’s our strength, their confusion.’

‘Did you know I can’t read or write, Amado?’

‘Does it matter? You talk enough for ten men.’

‘All Spaniards talk a lot. Ask a Spaniard a question and he delivers a speech.’

A spent bullet skittered across the mud throwing up wings of spray. Chimo said, ‘Tell me something, Amado, are you scared?’

‘I would be a fool not to be.’

‘You are a fool to be here at all: it is not your war.’

‘I sometimes wonder whose war it is.’

‘Clever words from one of your books?’ Adam had with him behind the lines Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That , the French edition of Ulysses , Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms , and an anti-war book, Cry Havoc! by a newspaper columnist, Beverly Nichols.

‘Nothing clever. But if it had been left to the Spanish it might have been over by now.’

‘Who would have won?’ Chimo asked.

‘Without German and Italian planes our side wouldn’t have been able to land troops in Spain. Without Russian “advisers”, without their tanks and planes, the Republicans would have been driven into the sea. Perhaps it is their war, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s and Stalin’s.’

‘And Britain’s? You are here, inglés .’

‘Most of my countrymen are on the other side.’ Adam jerked his head towards the enemy lines across the small, thickly curved river. ‘With the Americans and French and Poles …’

‘And Germans and Italians. It isn’t just Spaniards who are fighting each other.’ Chimo combed his extravagant moustache with muddy fingers. ‘Why are you fighting on our side, Amado? And don’t confuse me with ideals.’

‘Because I was looking for something to believe in,’ Adam said.

A second shell exploded behind them throwing up gouts of sparkling rock.

‘The third one,’ Chimo said, ‘is ours.’

Four of them at the dinner table to celebrate the 60th birthday of William Stoppard, Professor of Economics at Oxford. Kate, his daughter, 18 and already bored; Richard Hibbert, at Trinity, Cambridge, who would have joined the International Brigade if he hadn’t been a pacifist; and Adam. Subject: non-intervention.

‘It is, of course, quite disgraceful,’ said Stoppard, his pointed pepper-and-salt beard agreeing with him.

‘Why?’ Adam asked in the pause before dessert. Two of the leaded windows in the rambling house near Lambourn were open and evening smells, chestnut and horses, reached him making him restless.

‘Why?’ The beard seemed suspended in disbelief. Kate, blonde with neat features, hair arranged in frozen waves, stared at him. She took a De Reszke from a slim gold case and lit it.

‘I hope no one minds,’ she said.

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ Adam said.

‘Too bad.’ She blew a jet of smoke across the table at him.

‘Perhaps,’ Stoppard said, ‘you could explain yourself, young man.’

‘I’m questioning your assumption, sir,’ said Adam who had drunk three whiskies before dinner. ‘Am I to assume that you are referring to the possibility of intervention on the side of the Republicans?’

Was there any other kind? the silence asked.

Hibbert, who was in love with Kate Stoppard, said, ‘You must have read about the atrocities perpetrated by the Fascists at Badajoz.’ He turned his heavy and wrathful face to Stoppard for approval; Stoppard’s beard nodded.

Adam poured himself wine and said, ‘You must have read about the atrocities perpetrated by the Republicans at Madrid.’

Kate squashed her half-smoked cigarette – she didn’t look as though she had enjoyed it anyway – and considered him, neat head to one side. The flames of the candles on the table wavered in a breeze summoned from the darkness outside.

Stoppard began to lecture.

‘The Fascists are the insurgents. Their ostensible object: to overthrow by force the Government of the Republic elected by popular franchise. Their ulterior motive: to re-establish the privileges they enjoyed under the monarchy – in effect the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera – which were the exploitation of the poor.’

Adam said, ‘With respect, sir, if you believe that you’ll believe anything.’ As the second silence of the evening lengthened he said to Kate, ‘That’s what Wellington said when some idiot said to him, “Mr Jones, I believe?” I’m a great admirer of Arthur Wellesley.’

Stoppard said, ‘Perhaps, Adam, you would be good enough to elaborate on that last statement and enlighten us.’

A timorous girl in a black and white uniform served dessert, lemon soufflé.

‘Certainly,’ said Adam. ‘Do you believe in God, sir?’

‘Get on with it, man,’ Hibbert said excavating fiercely with his spoon in the soufflé.

‘I ask because I cannot understand how you can support a regime that condones the destruction of churches and the murder of priests.’

‘Ah, the Irresponsibles; I thought we’d come to them,’ Stoppard remarked indulgently. He tasted his soufflé; his beard approved.

‘From February to June this year,’ Adam said, concentrating, ‘160 churches were burned. There were also 269 assassinations, 113 general strikes and 228 half-cocked ones. Spain was in a state of anarchy, so is it small wonder that generals such as Mola, Queipo de Llano and Franco and the rest decided to bring back stability?’

‘Did you do your homework on the way?’ Stoppard asked. He winked at Hibbert.

‘As a matter of fact I did. It was inevitable that you would talk about non-intervention. But there’s nothing to stop anyone intervening. Not even you, sir.’

Hibbert said irrelevantly, ‘John Cornford’s fighting with the International Brigades. And Sommerfield. And Esmond Romilly, Churchill’s nephew.’

‘A pity they’re fighting on the wrong side.’

‘Are you a Fascist, Adam? A blackshirt?’ Hibbert asked.

‘What I am,’ Adam said, watching Kate lick lemon soufflé from her upper lip and wondering about her breasts beneath her silk dress, ‘is anti-Communist. We all know what’s happened in Russia – a worse tyranny than before. Do we want that in Spain?’

Stoppard laid down his spoon and addressed his class. What we were witnessing in Spain, he told them, was an exercise in European Fascism. Hitler wanted to assist Spain so that he could establish bases there for the next war and help himself to the country’s iron ore. Mussolini was helping because he wanted to control the Mediterranean. And both wanted to test their planes, their guns and their tanks. If they, the enemies of the future, were championing the Fascists, why should not Britain aid the Republicans?

Adam, who had learned at Cambridge never to answer a question directly, said, ‘What is so different between Fascism and Communism?’

The third silence of the evening. Kate took a cigarette from her case and tapped it on one painted fingernail.