40

After what seemed to her a suitable length of time, Lilí telephoned the hospital to ask how her brother was getting on. She finally managed to speak to Father Rodrigo. The boy was still alive, but the doctors had given up all hope of saving him, and the dreaded moment could arrive at any time. The duke would not move from his son’s bedside, and Paquita, who could not bear the anxiety, rushed in and out of the hospital room with loud protestations of grief. Lilí was stunned by the news, her anguish made worse by her mother’s mysterious disappearance. A short while earlier she had sent the butler out to look for her in the streets around the mansion: he took the shotgun with him, hidden beneath the folds of his coat.

An hour later, he returned without any news of the duchess. It was a very tense night, and in Paseo de la Castellana he had not come across anyone who might have seen her. Lilí preferred not to contact the police; all she could do was wait and trust in providence. Instructing the servants to inform her if there was any development, she shut herself in her room. She could not keep up her pretense of calm. But far from comforting her, these familiar surroundings only increased her unease: everything there reminded her of her recent encounter with the Englishman. Perhaps at that very moment he was dead too. In her unbridled adolescent fantasy she saw him stretched out lifeless, killed by a gunman’s bullet or butchered with a knife. Perhaps his very last thought had been of her.

Among those who thought they knew her best, Lilí was regarded as levelheaded, with a positive attitude to life; someone happy to celebrate, although slightly immature and naïve. In fact, she was quite the opposite. Her situation was made worse by the fact that her cold, analytical brain and her passionate, rebellious heart had combined to lead her secretly to reject all the religious teachings she had received. Now, deprived of the comfort of prayer and belief in divine intervention, at the end of her tether after all her recent intense experiences, she thought she was going mad.

At ten past eleven, someone knocked on her door. Lilí covered her ears so as not to hear this herald of devastating news, but then recovered and went to answer. The maid told her that her father was on the telephone. Lilí ran to it. The duke was barely audible, and was so excited he could hardly get the words out. Sobbing and spluttering, he told her that her mother had arrived at the hospital ten minutes earlier. She had pushed past Father Rodrigo, who was trying to prevent her from going into her son’s room, and threw herself on Guillermo, calling his name and smothering him with kisses. At that precise moment, the miracle had occurred. Guillermo del Valle opened his eyes and smiled when he recognized his mother’s face. The doctors, astonished at this reaction, which was completely inexplicable in medical terms, found they had to attend to Paquita, who had fainted. Lilí was the only element missing from this scene of utter joy.

“Come as quickly as you can,” cried the duke. “Join us in giving thanks to God. And tell Julián to come with you. It’s dangerous out in the streets tonight. Apparently there’s been more shooting, and buildings set alight.”

Lilí had just put the telephone down when it rang again. As she was so close to it, she picked it up herself. An unknown man’s voice asked for Paquita.

“She’s not here. Who’s calling?”

“A friend,” said the voice at the far end of the line. “Just tell her the Englishman is safe and sound.”

Lilí collapsed onto a chair. The maid asked if she was feeling all right. After a few moments Lilí said she was, and told her to gather all the staff in the music room. Once they were all assembled, she told them of Guillermo’s miraculous recovery. When the murmurs of contentment had died away, she asked them to say the rosary to give thanks to God for the grace he had granted, and instructed the butler to find a taxi in which to accompany her to the hospital. Then she went back to her bedroom to dress for going out.

It took twenty minutes for Julián to return to the mansion in a taxi. Due to the disturbances in parts of the city center, many taxi drivers had stopped working to avoid getting caught up in incidents that could result in damage to their vehicles.

“They burn your taxi and you’re done for,” their driver told them.

As proof of his warning, the night sky was red with flames.

It was after midnight by the time Lilí finally arrived safely at Atocha, and was able to enter her brother’s hospital room. The atmosphere was one of restrained joy. Although the youngster’s life was out of danger, he was still under observation, and there was no call for them to be too optimistic as yet: a relapse could not be ruled out, and the after-effects of the wound and the desperate last-minute operation were yet to be determined.

Lilí shared her family’s delight, then took Paquita aside and told her of the telephone call about Anthony. Paquita received the news with complete indifference: it was obvious the Englishman no longer interested her. Lilí could not help wondering what had caused this abrupt volte-face, and also where her mother had got to during the lengthy period between her disappearing from the mansion and reappearing at the hospital.

The answer to this last question was as simple as it was extraordinary, and requires a brief digression.

Still not yet sixty years old, Don Niceto Alcalá-Zamora had concluded that his active participation in politics was almost over and done with. He had been the first elected president of the Second Republic, and had occupied that position of highest responsibility throughout the five years of its troubled existence. Conservative and Catholic, he had had to struggle with extremists on the Left and Right, with the workers’ movements, the demands of the nationalists, with pressure from the Church and Army who saw him as the guarantor of public order, with a press only too happy to blame all the country’s woes on decisions he made and, worst of all, with the intrigues, jealousies and petty-mindedness that went hand-in-hand with power. It had been impossible for him to please everyone; in fact, he had ended up with almost everyone against him, and yet he was proud of the fact that, thanks to his tenacity, capacity to negotiate and ardent rhetoric, he had safeguarded democracy from his detractors’ plots and extremist fantasies. Now, however, he saw the end of his period in office fast approaching. Neither he nor his methods were to the taste of the Popular Front, still less to Manuel Azaña. The idea of relinquishing his post and possibly politics altogether saddened him but did not leave him in despair: he was pessimistic about the future because he could see disaster looming, and he did not want to preside over the funeral rites of a regime for which he had given his all, and which he had saved in extremis on many occasions. On top of all this, one of his daughters was married to a son of Queipo de Llano: if there was an uprising, the war would invade his home. As with all politicians, the idea of resigning broke his heart, but at his age, and with the added problem of the onset of blindness, the thought of retirement increasingly filled him with pleasure rather than melancholy.

That night he had been about to finish work when an aide-de-camp announced there was a lady outside who insisted on seeing him. There was a ducal crown on her visiting card, and when an assistant read him the name, the President gave orders for her to be shown in at once. His failing vision allowed him to make out the blurred outline of the Duchess of La Igualada and, with the agility of someone who knows every inch of a room he has worked in for years, he managed to skirt furniture and assistants and kiss the hand of his much-loved friend.

“Marujín!”

“Niceto!”

He dismissed the staff and invited her to sit down. The duchess and the President were both from Priego, a town in the province of Córdoba. A youngster of extraordinary intelligence, perseverance and dedication, Alcalá-Zamora had left Priego to study at university, go into politics and eventually reach the nation’s highest office. Slightly younger than her childhood friend, the duchess had left their town soon afterward to receive a meticulous education at a boarding school run by the nuns of the Sacré-Coeur in Seville, after which she had married Don Alvaro del Valle, Duke of La Igualada. Before they had gone their separate ways, Niceto and Marujín had not only shared the games and escapades of childhood, but also begun the innocent flirtations of puberty. Since those days they had met from time to time, always constrained by the demands of protocol and ceremony.

“You’re as pretty as ever, Marujín. Time seems to stand still where you’re concerned.”

“I’ve already heard that you’re as blind as a bat, Niceto. I look a fright. Besides, the worst thing that can happen to a woman has just happened to me. That’s why I’m here.”

Alerted by this unexpected declaration, Don Niceto Alcalá-Zamora stroked his mustache and said affectionately:

“Tell me what’s upsetting you, my dear.”

The duchess waved her gloved hand; the charms on her bracelet tinkled.

“I’ve come to ask a small favor of you. It’s something just between the two of us, Niceto. I escaped from home by the back door to get here; no one knows where I am, nor should they ever know. Not to protect our reputations: we’re too old for any gossip. No, because of what I’m about to ask of you.”

“If it’s within my power, you know I’ll do it.”

“I want you to put the Marquis of Estella in jail. Promise me you’ll do it, Niceto, for the sake of our old friendship.”

“Primo’s son? Goodness gracious, I’m often sorely tempted, believe me. That boy is a good-for-nothing. Perhaps it’s not his fault: he lost his mother when he was five, and then his father was always out on the town . . . But what you’re asking is beyond my powers, Maruja. I’m not a dictator. I have to show respect for the Republican rule of law, in what I say and even more in what I do.”

The duchess went from lighthearted banter to profound distress in the blink of an eye. For some minutes the President of the Republic heard her sobbing and could dimly make out a bulky figure heaving in front of him. His pleas and expressions of affection gradually restored the desolate mother’s power of speech.

“That little upstart marquis is the source of all my troubles,” she said. “Only yesterday I caught my daughter in floods of tears. She didn’t want to tell me the reason, but a mother doesn’t have to be told certain things. That marquis has been prowling around her for some time. Paquita is a fully-grown woman: she has a good head on her shoulders and her feet on the ground, but she is a woman. And the Devil teaches third-rate Don Juans a ton of tricks.”

“Maruja, we cannot be certain he has done anything wrong. And if no one files a complaint, we have no reason to arrest him.”

“Certain! I am the Duchess of La Igualada, and my word is more than enough! But there’s more. That man has brainwashed the whole family with his ideas: my husband wants to throw away our inheritance, my eldest son is in Rome, paying court to that gesticulating clown, and my youngest is running around Madrid dressed in blue like a plumber. It will all come to nothing, I know. But Niceto, you’re the President of the Republic. Get that monster out of my life!”

Fearing another deluge of tears, Alcalá opted for a balanced judgment.

“Don’t cry, Maruja. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll instruct the police to arrest him on any excuse. With the things he gets up to, it won’t be hard to find some misdemeanor. And once we’ve got him behind bars, we can think of the next step. Leave it to me.”

Before the duchess had time to weigh his offer, the aide-de-camp entered in a state of great excitement. Without apologizing for bursting in on them, he went over to the President and whispered something in his ear. Alcalá-Zamora blenched.

“Maruja, my dear friend,” he said in solemn tones, “I’ve got some bad news for you. I’ve been told that your son Guillermo has been wounded in a gun battle. I don’t know how seriously. At this moment he is being attended to at the Clinical Hospital. Your place now is by his side. He needs you. I’ll make sure an official car takes you there. And please, keep me informed.”

He pressed a button, assistants appeared, and, after a brief farewell, the distraught duchess left. As soon as he was on his own, Alcalá-Zamora asked for a call to be put through to the Interior Minister. When he came on the line, the President instructed him to find and arrest José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Taken aback, Don Amós Salvador dared raise an objection.

“Legally, that would be no problem, sir. But putting the National Chief of the Falange in jail would be a ticking time bomb. His followers would take to the streets. And we couldn’t lock them all up.”

“Round up a few of the leaders. You know, cut their numbers. In this country it’s no disgrace to spend time behind bars. I was arrested in 1931. Put them in Modelo prison, and if they make a fuss, get them out of Madrid and send them somewhere quiet: to Lugo, Tenerife, Alicante, wherever you like. That way they’ll be protected, not least from themselves.”