Derek Lambert - The Gate of the Sun

The baby was as she had left it in a makeshift cot, a drawer padded with pillows; Able Seaman Thomas Emlyn Jones was also as she had left him, sitting beside the drawer on the bunk reading a copy of a magazine called Razzle .

He hastily folded the magazine and placed it on the bunk beneath his cap.

‘Not a sound,’ he said. ‘Not a dicky bird.’ He stared at his big, furry hands. ‘I was wondering … How are you going to get to England?’

‘Train,’ she said. ‘Then ferry.’

‘Lumbering cattle trucks, those ferries. You mind she isn’t sick,’ pointing to the sleeping baby.

Martine glanced at herself in the mirror. There were shadows under her eyes and her face was drained.

‘It is me who will be sick.’ She spoke English slowly and with care.

‘And me,’ Marisa said. She lay on the bunk and closed her eyes.

‘You’d be surprised how many sailors are sea-sick,’ Taffy Jones said.

Martine, who was becoming queazy, stared curiously at his chapel-dark features. ‘What part of England do you come from?’ she asked.

‘England is it?’ His reaction was unexpected and, she suspected, ungrammatical.

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Aren’t you English?’

‘Is the Pope a Protestant? I come from Wales, girl, and don’t you ever forget it.’

Now she understood. He was just like a Basque, she thought. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s me that should be sorry, bloody fool that I am.’ He looked at his hands, clenching them and unclenching them, and then he looked at the baby. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘when you get to England … Do you have anywhere to go?’

‘A relative,’ thinking of her brother Pierre who worked in the Credit Lyonnais in London.

‘Ah, not too bad then.’ He adjusted the pillow behind the baby’s head. ‘But just in case this relative of yours is too distant, if you’re ever stuck … You know, if you don’t have anywhere to go you could always come and see us in Wales.’ He handed her a lined sheet of paper. ‘There’s the address, just in case.’ He stood up awkwardly.

Martine took the scrap of paper. ‘Thank you Monsieur Jones.’

‘Taffy.’

‘Monsieur Taffy. And now,’ she said, as the baby stirred and prepared its face to cry, ‘I must feed her.’

Taffy Jones picked up his cap and his copy of Razzle . ‘What are you going to call her?’ he said. ‘I meant to ask you.’

‘Isabel.’

‘Can she have another name?’

‘As many as she wants,’ Martine said.

‘My name’s Thomas. I thought maybe Thomasina might be a good name. How does it sound in Spanish?’

‘It sounds like Tomasina,’ Martine said. ‘And now if you’ll excuse me.’

Isabel Tomasina began to whimper and at first the sounds were so small that to Taffy Jones they sounded like the lonely cries of the seagulls wheeling overhead.

It was dawn – the classic time for executions. Tom Canfield and Adam Fleming walked under armed guard. Behind them were Delgado and the young captain.

Mist lay in the valley but here in a field of vines the air was clean and still night-smelling. A squadron of Capronis flew high above Pingarrón.

Adam glanced at Canfield. He looked thoughtful, that was all, thoughtful and, with his fair hair and lazily dangerous face, very American, convinced that he would be welcome anywhere in the world and if not he would want to know the reason why.

Not any more, Tom Canfield, we are going to die, you and I. For what? For bringing our contradictory ideals to a foreign land?

He stumbled over a fiercely pruned vine. He looked back. The vines squatted in the wet earth like a graveyard of crosses.

There is no future. Life is an entity, not a sequence. It is mine and when it is severed there will be no life for anyone because it is I who see and hear. No life for you, Colonel Delgado, slicing the enemy bristles from your cheeks with a cut-throat razor; no promotion for you, Captain, so handy with your long-barrelled pistol, certainly no life for you, Tom Canfield, who dropped into my life just 12 hours ago.

They approached a ruined farmhouse. A whitewashed wall was still standing and there were blood stains and the pock marks of bullets on it.

Adam Fleming opened his mouth and screamed but no sound issued from his lips.

Canfield said, ‘Excuse me, Colonel, may I ask you a question?’

Delgado switched irritably with his cane at a clump of nettles. ‘What is it?’

‘Will you grant a last request?’

‘What is it?’

‘Don’t shoot me.’

‘You have a sense of humour,’ Delgado said. ‘Why else would you be fighting for Republicans?’

Adam noticed that Canfield’s lips were tight and a muscle was moving in the line of his jaw. They stopped in front of the wall beneath a flap of bamboo roof. Where was the firing squad?

Delgado, holding his cane between two hands, turned and faced them. ‘You,’ to Canfield, ‘will be executed because you were found wearing civilian clothes and carrying false papers. You,’ – to Adam – ‘should be executed for desertion.’

Should?

‘But I am willing to concede you were shell-shocked. However, you know my views on foreign mercenaries meddling in Spain’s war. It seems logical, therefore, that you should carry out the execution.’ The captain handed Adam the pistol. ‘After all, he is the enemy.’

Adam took the gun. It had been tended with love, and he knew the mechanism would work snugly.

Delgado pointed at the blood-stained wall with his cane. ‘Over there.’ The blood stains were the colour of rust. ‘Do you want to be blindfolded?’ he asked Canfield.

‘I like to look the enemy in the eye. One of the lessons you learn in boxing.’ There was a catch in his voice and his body was shaking and because they had known each other a long time, 12 hours at least, Adam knew that he was thinking, ‘Please, God, don’t let me be a coward.’

Cowardice? Who cared about cowardice? Why did they teach children that it mattered? If I live I will teach children that cowardice is natural, the most natural thing in the world; but I shan’t live because I can’t shoot Tom Canfield.

‘If you refuse,’ Delgado was saying, ‘you, too, will be executed for desertion, for refusing to obey an order, for cowardice.’

There it was again, cowardice. I wish I could pin medals on the breasts of all those who have exhibited cowardice in the face of the enemy. I wish I could tell my children that they should never be ashamed of crying.

‘There.’ Delgado indicated a line whitewashed on the mud. ‘Get it over with quickly: we are due to attack again.’

The sound of aircraft filled the sky. Adam looked up. Russian-built Katiuska twin-engined bombers.

‘Get on with it,’ Delgado snapped.

Adam raised the pistol.

‘I will raise my cane,’ Delgado said. ‘When I drop it you will fire. Empty the barrel, just in case.’

Adam stared down the barrel of the pistol, lined up Canfield’s chest with the inverted V blade foresight and the V notch rearsight. Why shouldn’t I shoot him? He is the enemy, a red, and I have killed many of those already.

Canfield said, ‘How about that …’ He lost his sentence, recaptured it. ‘… last request? A cigarette?’

You don’t smoke, Adam thought. He stroked the trigger. Two pressures? Why do you hesitate, Adam Fleming? Canfield chose to fight on that side, you on this. You came to Spain to kill reds, didn’t you? Priest-killers, murderers of your sister’s husband.

Who is the enemy?

‘Permission refused.’ Delgado’s cane fell.

The last thing Adam Fleming remembered was the roar of a Katiuska bomber.

Tom Canfield assumed he was dead.