María Dueñas - The Time in Between

Settling the debt in Tangiers was liberating, like having a rope freed from my neck. It was true that I still had the lawsuits in Madrid to resolve, but from this distance it all seemed terribly far away. Paying the debt at the Continental allowed me to free myself of the burden of my past with Ramiro in Morocco and to breathe differently. More calmly, more freely. The mistress, now, of my own destiny.

Summer progressed, but my clients still seemed lazy about contemplating their autumn wardrobes. Jamila remained with me, looking after the house and doing small jobs in the workshop. Félix came around to visit almost every night, and from time to time I would go over to see Candelaria at La Luneta. Everything at peace, everything quite normal, until an inconveniently timed cold left me without the strength to leave the house or the energy to do any sewing. I spent the first day lying prostrate on the sofa. The second in bed. The third I’d have done the same but for an unexpected appearance. As unexpected as it always was.

“Siñora Rosalinda say Siñorita Sira get up out of bed immediately.”

I went out to meet her in my dressing gown; I didn’t bother to put on my never-changing suit or hang the silver scissors around my neck, not even to straighten my tousled hair. But if she was surprised at my disheveled state, she didn’t let it show: she had come to deal with other more serious matters.

“We’re going to Tangiers.”

“Who?” I asked, wiping my runny nose.

“You and me.”

“What for?”

“To try to resolve this thing with your mother.”

I looked at her halfway between disbelief and amazement. I wanted to know more.

“Through your…”

A sneeze prevented me from finishing the phrase, which I was grateful for as I wasn’t sure how to refer to the high commissioner, whom she always spoke of by his first name.

“No, I’d rather keep Juan Luis out of it: he has a thousand other matters to worry about. This is mine, so his contacts are out. But we have other options.”

“Which are?”

“Through our consul in Tangiers I tried to find out whether they’re making these sorts of arrangements in our embassy, but without any luck. He told me that our legation in Madrid has always refused to give asylum to refugees, and besides, since the Republican government moved to Valencia that’s where the diplomatic officials have been based. All that’s left in the capital is an empty building and some minor staff member to look after it.”

“So then?”

“I tried with St. Andrew’s, the Anglican church in Tangiers, but they weren’t able to help me either. Then it occurred to me that some private firm might know something, so I asked around here and there, and I managed to get hold of a tiny bit of information. Not a great deal, but we’ll see if we’re lucky and we might get a bit more out of it. The director of the Bank of London and South America in Tangiers, Leo Martin, told me that on his last trip to London he heard people in the bank’s headquarters talking about someone working in the Madrid branch who had some kind of contact with someone who’s helping people get out of the city. I don’t know any more than that; all the information he was able to give me was very vague, very imprecise, just a comment that someone made that he overheard. But he’s promised to check things out.”

“When?”

“Inmediatamente—right now. I was there a couple of days ago, he told me to return today. So you’re going to get yourself dressed right away and we’re going to Tangiers to see him. I imagine he should have had time to find out a bit more.”

I tried to thank her for her efforts, between coughs and sneezes, but she played it all down and just pressed me to get myself ready. The trip was a whirlwind. The road, dry plains, areas covered in pines, goats. Women in big striped skirts with their walking slippers, laden down under their large straw hats. Sheep, prickly pears, more dry plains, barefoot children who smiled at us as we passed and raised their hand to wave good-bye. Dust, more dust, yellow plains to one side, yellow plains to the other, passport control, more road, more prickly pear cacti, more palm trees and sugarcane plantations, and in just an hour we’d arrived. Again we parked in the Place de France, again we were welcomed by the broad avenues and the magnificent buildings of the city’s modern quarter. In one of them the Bank of London and South America awaited us—a curious alloy of financial interests, almost as strange as the pair Rosalinda Fox and I made.

“Sira, allow me to introduce you to Leo Martin. Leo, this is my friend Miss Quiroga.”

Leo Martin could very easily have been Leoncio Martínez, had he been born just a couple of miles from where he actually was. Short and dark, if he hadn’t been shaved and wearing a tie he could have passed for a tough Spanish farmhand. But his face gleamed clean of any shadow of a beard, and a serious-looking striped tie rested on his belly. And he wasn’t Spanish, or a peasant, but an authentic subject of Great Britain: a man from Gibraltar capable of expressing himself in English and Andalusian with equal facility. He greeted us with a shake of his hairy hand, offered us a seat, and gave the old crow who served as his secretary an order not to disturb us. Then, as though we were the bank’s wealthiest clients, he proceeded to inform us eagerly about what he’d been able to find out. I’d never opened a bank account in my life, and Rosalinda probably didn’t have a single pound saved from the allowance that her husband sent her whenever he was in the mood, but the rumors about my friend’s amorous pursuits must have reached the ears of this little man with the curious linguistic abilities. And in these turbulent times the director of an international bank couldn’t miss an opportunity to do a favor for the lover of the man in charge next door.

“Well, ladies, I think I have some news. I’ve been able to speak to Eric Gordon, an old acquaintance of mine who was working at our branch in Madrid shortly after the uprising; now he’s been reposted to London. He told me he knows someone personally who lives in Madrid and who is involved in these sorts of activities, a British citizen who worked for a Spanish firm. The bad news is that he doesn’t know how to contact him; he’s lost track of him in the last few months. The good news is that he’s supplied me with the details of someone who is familiar with his whereabouts because he was living in the capital until recently. He’s a journalist who’s gone back to England because there was some problem; I think he was injured, but he didn’t give me the details. Well anyway, this person might be prepared to put you in touch with the man who is evacuating the refugees. But he wants something first.”

“What?” Rosalinda and I asked in unison.

“To speak to you personally, Mrs. Fox,” he said, turning to the Englishwoman. “The sooner the better. I hope you won’t consider it too forward, but, given the circumstances, I thought it appropriate to let him know who it was who wanted this information from him.”

Rosalinda didn’t reply; she just looked at him, alert, her eyebrows arched, waiting for him to continue talking. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, doubtless having expected a more enthusiastic response to what he had said.

“You know what these journalists are like, don’t you? Like carrion birds, always after something.”

Rosalinda took a few seconds to reply.

“They aren’t the only ones, Leo dear, they aren’t the only ones,” she said a little sourly. “But anyway, put me in contact with him. Let’s see what he wants.”

I shifted in my seat, trying to hide my nerves, and blew my nose again. Meanwhile, the British director with the body of an earthenware pot and the accent of a bullfighter gave the telephone operator an order to connect the call. We waited a long while. They brought us coffee; Rosalinda regained her good mood and Martin his composure. At last the moment arrived for the conversation with the journalist. It only lasted three minutes, and Rosalinda spoke so softly I didn’t catch a word of it. What I did sense, however, was the serious, sharp tone in my client’s voice.