Derek Lambert - The Gate of the Sun

Adam said, ‘Is Hitler a dictator?’

Of course.

‘And Stalin?’

So it appeared.

‘Are they not both anti-Semitic?’

Perhaps.

‘Enemies, imagined or otherwise, purged?’

There were similarities.

‘Both presiding over elitist societies in which the masses are subservient?’

‘That’s certainly true in Germany,’ Hibbert said.

‘And Russia. Ask any peasant.’

‘I haven’t met any recently,’ Stoppard said but no one in the class smiled.

The maid served coffee; Stoppard lit a cigar. ‘Adam,’ he said, almost fondly, ‘suggested just now that there was nothing to stop anyone intervening. On either side, you implied. Is that correct?’

‘Quite correct, sir.’

‘Then why, Adam, don’t you volunteer to fight for the Fascists?’

‘I might just do that,’ Adam said.

Chimo said, ‘Have you had many women, Amado?’

‘Not many,’ said Adam, who had made love to three girls.

‘I have had many, many girls.’

‘I’m sure they all remember you.’

‘Oh sure, they remember Chimo. And I remember one of them. You know, she gave me a present.’ He pointed to his crotch.

‘You don’t have to go with whores: you’re too much of a man.’

‘You don’t know girls. How can you fuck them with a chaperone sitting on your knee?’

‘Fuck the chaperone,’ said Adam, old soldier with three months service behind him.

Kate took Adam to her father’s cottage in the Cotswolds for a long weekend – without her father’s consent – five days after the dinner party at Lambourn.

They walked through countryside where stems of smoke rose steadily from hollows in the hills and horse chestnuts lay shiny in their split, hedgehog shells and boys with concertina socks kicked flocks of fallen leaves; they drank beer that tasted of nuts in small pubs; they danced to Lew Stone records; they made love on a bed that smelled of lavender.

But throughout the interlude Adam was aware of disquiet. It visited him as he watched the sun rise mistily through the branches of a moulting apple tree, or while he felt pastoral loneliness settle in the evenings; it materialized in the wasting happiness after they had made love.

At first he blamed it on the challenge he had accepted at Lambourn: it wasn’t every young man who was going to fight for the Fascists. That, surely, was enough to disturb the most swashbuckling of crusaders.

But it wasn’t until the afternoon of the Sunday, when she lay in bed with her back curved into his chest and his hands were cupped round her small breasts and he was examining the freckles on her back just below the nape of her neck, where her short, golden hair was still damp from exertion, that he realized the other cause for his disquiet.

‘Don’t think,’ she said, turning towards him, ‘that you have to go and fight because of me.’ Well, he didn’t; but suddenly he understood that she was only there beside him because he was prepared to risk death – a refreshing change from conventional young men with normal life expectations.

And, as he considered this premise, it came to him that maybe his motives were suspect. Did he really believe in the Fascist cause or was it wilfulness asserting itself? Surely ideals were the essence of purity. How was it, then, that both he and the other Englishmen fighting on opposite sides could both possess them? Can I be wrong? he asked himself.

She said, ‘What are you thinking about, Adam?’ and he said, ‘This and that.’

‘You were in another place.’ She reached for his hand and placed it on the soft hair between her thighs, and he forgot his disquiet.

Later, walking through silent woods, she held his hand. How long would the war last? she asked him. Not long, he told her: Franco was at the gates of Madrid.

‘Months?’

‘Weeks.’

‘Everything has been so quick,’ she said. ‘We only met a few days ago …’

‘What would your father say if he knew what we’d done in his cottage?’

‘Cut us off without a penny,’ Kate said promptly.

Us?

They sat on a log and she took a cigarette from her case, lit it and blew puffs of smoke through narrowed lips as though she found them distasteful. Ruffled pigeons settled above them.

‘I’ll always remember how you stood up for yourself at dinner that evening,’ she said.

‘They were debating in formulas. Mathematics aren’t always right.’

‘I hope you don’t think that just because …’

‘You’re cheap?’

‘Do they all say that?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Adam said.

‘How many?’

‘None of your bloody business,’ Adam said.

‘You don’t think I’m trying to trap you?’

‘By having a baby?’

‘I won’t,’ she said.

‘Did you bring me to the cottage because I’m going to war?’

‘Because you’re coming back from it.’

He put his arm round her waist under her coat. He could feel the fragile sharpness of her bones, the flatness of her stomach. He felt that he was expected to utter words of deep moment but they were elusive.

He stood up. She tossed aside her cigarette and he stamped on it, pulverizing it with the heel of his shoe. He turned her and pointed her towards the cottage. When they got back he lit a fire with pine cones and they watched the sparks chase each other up the chimney. He knew that she was waiting for the words that lay trapped in his throat so he switched off the lights and they lay down beside each other and he stared into the caverns of the fires in search of answers and justifications.

The justification was brought to Adam on a silver salver on 6 October, two days before the Michaelmas term was due to begin. He was sitting in the garden of his parents’ house in East Grinstead reading a newspaper summary of recent developments in Spain. Summer hadn’t quite abdicated, sunlight shining through smoke lit chrysanthemums and persistent roses, and a biplane traversed the pale sky towing a banner advertising the News Chronicle .

Adam read that General Francisco Franco had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Nationalist army and Head of State and that the Republicans had created a Popular Army. The Fascists seemed to be on the rampage – in September they had captured Irún, San Sebastian and Toledo – and if he didn’t act soon it would be too late.

But was wilfulness enough? Do I want to be a soldier of fortune, champion of my own ego? He flung down the newspaper and paced the lawns. He was near the pond where frogs plopped in the summer when the maid found him and handed him the letter on the salver as though it were something to eat.

The envelope, which bore a new Edward VIII stamp, had been posted in London the previous day but the writing was his sister’s and she was in Madrid. Fear stirred and he held the envelope for a few moments without opening it.

The letter was dated 16 August, so it must have been smuggled out of Spain – via Marseille, perhaps, on one of the British warships evacuating refugees – and posted in London.

Dear Adam,

Paco is dead. He was taken from our apartment two nights ago and driven to a village called Paracuellos del Jarama where, with two dozen other suspects, he was executed. They were forced to dig a mass grave, then machine-gunned and finished off with bullets in the backs of their necks.

I say suspects. Suspected of what I have no idea. Certainly Paco had no interests in politics, just his job and his home and his children – and me. But he was a good Catholic and an architect and relatively well off, so I suppose that was sufficient reason. Or maybe a private quarrel across the drawing board was settled in the name of the Republic; many old scores are being settled that way. All I know is that I am lost. I hear the children and I hear the maid (she is more scared than any of us) and I hear the shooting and I suppose I eat and sleep. It is supposed to be dangerous to walk in the streets but so far the Irresponsibles, as they call them, have not killed a foreign woman. Not that I care, although I should because of the children.