‘I say, have these. I feel a real Charlie carrying flowers.’
The golden-haired woman, the youngest of the group, took the flowers from a young man wearing a blazer and found herself, now holding a second bunch of flowers, pushed to the front to face the journalists and a battery of cine-cameras and photographers. ‘Everybody smile.’
They smiled.
‘A nice big wave.’
They waved.
A nurse said, ‘I wish I’d known that there was going to be such a to-do, I’d have given it a miss.’ Her accent seemed to be rather too ‘cut-glass’ for a nurse. With a hunch of her shoulders, she went on, ‘My mother doesn’t know yet that I’m going back to Spain. Fait accompli. Best way with mothers who fuss, eh?’
The young woman agreed. ‘I thought it would be just a photograph with the mayor.’
A man with a handsome Jewish face, wearing baggy corduroys and a tweed jacket and looking nothing like the popular image of the surgeon he was, said genially, ‘Come along, you nurses, let’s give these press chaps what they want,’ and he put his left arm round the nurse’s waist and the other round the woman with the golden hair.
The Real Charlie said, ‘Right! Let’s give them what they want and get the cause of the Spanish Republic in all the newsreels.’ Holding aloft the hand of the woman who now clutched the embarrassing flowers, he shouted, ‘¡No pasarán!’
‘Lord save us,’ said the nurse, rolling her eyes. ‘A patriot before he’s even there.’
When the newsreel film of the Aid to Spain send-off was shown in cinemas, the belief of the group that they were part of a great and idealistic movement intent on saving the world from fascism showed clearly in their youthful eyes.
On the journey between Victoria Station and the Gare du Nord there was a gradual emergence of individuals. The nurse was called Crane, the Real Charlie was Phil Martin, a medical aide, the doctor was David Goldring, and the very young, golden-haired woman said her name was Eve Anders.
On that leg of the journey, Eve, although not unfriendly, kept to the fringes of the group, secretly revelling in her marvellous new freedom. These people were what she had hoped for. Not to be found in her own environment, they were radicals with revolutionary ideals and, she decided, they probably also believed in equality for women and free love. They seemed very red; she had never heard such left-of-left views expressed before.
What would Ray think of them? Ray was the elder of her two brothers, committed to working for his union; he would think she had better watch out, these were dangerous people. Ken, her other brother, had declared himself a Republican and was already in Spain, fighting with the International Brigade. So it was of Ken she thought when Dina Vandeck, one of the doctors, moved the talk on to Marx and then to the royal family.
‘This is my second stint at the barricades,’ Dina said, boasting, but maybe sending herself up a bit. ‘I had intended travelling weeks ago, but my mother got herself so upset over the abdication that she made herself ill.’
Phil Martin hooted. ‘Upset about those two parasites? Not a great chum of Harry Pollitt is she, then, your mother?’
Crane said, ‘I have heard that they intend making their home in Germany.’
Goldring said, ‘Hitler’s welcome to them.’
‘For my money,’ Phil Martin said, ‘they should all be cleared off to Germany, the whole bang shoot of them, back where they came from. Monarchy is just fascism with knobs on, right?’
‘Right!’ Goldring said. ‘Very far right,’ and everybody laughed.
Eve Anders, who had thought her own views were quite advanced, was stimulated by the easy way they threw comments at one another, and wondered whether she happened to be travelling with an unusually leftist-thinking group. They were all in agreement that class consciousness was the bugbear of Britain, and that inherited privilege sprang from the top and the top was the king. She felt quite ashamed that she had seen the Silver Jubilee procession and had danced at a Coronation celebration party. But the shame soon dissolved into a kind of euphoria when, as they were speeding through France, she was occasionally drawn in to the conversation.
In what seemed like a very short time, they were drawing into the Gare du Nord. After brief farewells and wishing Eve good luck, the medical unit hurried off to catch another train to Barcelona.