Eve longed to see something of Barcelona, but her instructions were to pick up a lorry and take some young Spanish men and one woman to Albacete, as well as a soldier, Perez, who was going to Lerida and wanted a lift only as far as Tarragona. A tenth passenger she had to pick up outside the railway station: a French-Canadian in civilian clothes carrying a military kit-bag, François Le Bon.
Perez, who had been sitting up front, handed over the route map and relinquished the passenger seat to the bilingual Le Bon. As they made their way further south, so the landscape changed. In the heat of the afternoon, Eve drew off the road into the shade of some trees and gave in to the necessity of siesta. When the sun was lower they set out again, but the air was still hotter than Eve had ever known. Her passengers, catching the through breeze, sang songs with stirring tunes, while Perez pored attentively over newspapers or snoozed.
They stopped at Tarragona where Perez arranged for Eve to stay the night at his sister’s house. She had spoken very little to him on the journey, but in Tarragona he turned out to be a courteous man with a school-teacherish manner, or perhaps it was that he reminded her of a teacher at the night-school she had attended for several years. Perez’s sister, Señora Portillo, a teacher who spoke some English, ran a small hostal providing little more than accommodation, but Eve welcomed the atmosphere. Her husband Eduardo and son Paulo were away fighting.
Eve was up at dawn the next day to give the lorry a check before setting out on the long journey. The Señora pressed upon them a parting gift of some home-made oaty biscuits and bottles of fizzy drink, la gaseosa, a new word for Eve’s rapidly expanding vocabulary. Knowing that they were headed south she asked them to enquire for Eduardo and Paulo, whom she had not heard from for weeks. They had been in the military barracks in Albacete, so perhaps they had not received her letters. ‘I ask everyone,’ she said. ‘It may happen that your paths cross; these things happen in war.’
While the others were making themselves as comfortable as their rifles, gear and the wooden bed of the lorry would allow, François Le Bon spent a few minutes studying the map, as he had done the day before, then relaxed into the upright passenger seat. In minutes they were away, Señora Portillo standing forlornly in her yard, then returning the clenched-fist salute of the young people who were setting out as full of spirit as had the missing Eduardo and Paulo.
The little hostal was about halfway to their destination, so they were prepared for the best part of another day on the road. Again François Le Bon took on the role of tourist guide and interpreter for their inexperienced driver. Although Eve was quite content with her own company, she enjoyed his comments on the passing scene, as he recorded items of interest in a loose-leaf notebook.
‘Zaragoza, the Balearics, Sierra Nevada, Andalucia, Granada,’ she said. ‘When I was a schoolgirl and geography was boring, I used to flip through the atlas looking for romantic names and Spain had such a lot of them. My imagination would be set on fire by them, especially the ones that ended with A: Yecla, Villena, Cieza, La Mancha, Andalucia, Granada.’
The militia woman known as Marguerite, the leader, leaned into the cab and said something too fast for Eve to understand, except for ‘La Mancha’.
Eve turned her head briefly. ‘No comprendo,’ she said, adding, with a smile, ‘Don Quixote was from La Mancha.’
Marguerite shook Le Bon’s shoulder, indicating that he should interpret, then repeated her eager message.
Le Bon understood. ‘She asks if you have been to La Mancha.’ Eve shook her head. ‘It’s where she’s from, from the town of Consuela. She says… extranjeros… ? foreigners? Yes… she’s saying foreigners always know about Don Quixote but they don’t know about the beautiful plains of La Mancha where the saffron crocuses grow.’
Eve nodded. ‘Saffron… I understand.’ She took her eyes off the road long enough to smile at Marguerite and grasp her hand briefly.
‘Gracias.’ To Le Bon she said, ‘I wish I’d had the good sense to have read languages.’
Le Bon tilted his head and took a long look at her. ‘What did you read?’
She paused before answering, realizing that he was bound to think that she had been to university and that she half hoped he would, otherwise why had she said ‘read’ instead of ‘learned’? She felt irritated by her own crassness. ‘Nothing noteworthy.’
‘Oh,’ he said shortly, and closed his notebook. The silence that followed seemed all the more marked because the men in the back were all dozing.
Eventually, she said, ‘Don’t stop writing, I didn’t mean noteworthy in that way. Sorry if I sounded prickly.’
‘It’s OK. It’s just me, I’ve got the curiosity of a cat. When I’m back home I write a column for my hometown paper. That’s what this is about,’ he indicated his notebook.
‘Oh. You’re reporting on the war for a local paper?’
‘No. Well, yes and no. I just send stuff back.’
‘And you write about the war?’
‘Not about the war; more about people, I guess.’
‘What they call human interest stories?’
He smiled, ‘Yeah, they do, they do. Which is why I was so curious about how a young English beauty comes to be driving a truck to Albacete with such an assorted bunch as we are.’
‘Because about the only thing she could offer that was of any use, was to drive.’
‘Why on the side of the Republic?’
She was taken aback. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘To me yes, but not every English lady is on the side of the Republic. I heard one recently, doing a radio broadcast in English, describing how she felt about Spain, about life carrying on bravely with battles raging within ear-shot, how the fiestas and market-days carried on regardless, about the shining light – meaning Franco – that was guiding the youth of Spain.’
‘That’s just how they feel,’ she indicated Marguerite and the others dozing in the back, ‘from those songs they were singing: pretty inspirational, guided by a shining light.’
‘She was Florence Farmborough, ever heard of her? A British fascist. On Sunday evenings she does radio talks from Salamanca, to English-speaking countries. She dedicates her account of her experiences in Spain “with pride and humility to Generalissimo Franco”.’
‘When I see a Western, I’m never on the side of the cowboys. The Indians were only fighting to keep their own land. So I would want to help Republican Spain, wouldn’t I?’
By now they had almost reached Valencia, and started on that part of the journey on which Perez had said they would probably hear shelling. Battles were raging between the Nationalist and Republican forces just to the east of the road on which they were driving. At the beginning of the year, the Nationalists had held Madrid, then the Republicans had taken it back, but now the two sides were preparing to fight for the city once again.
‘Will we hear the guns from here?’
‘We might—’ François Le Bon didn’t finish his sentence.
Eve didn’t know which registered first, the clean hole in the shattered windscreen, the sense of movement of air by her cheek or the crack of rifle fire. She jumped on the brakes. The vehicle slewed, turned round, tyres squealing to a sliding halt. Her heart was pumping twenty to the dozen, and her fingers were locked to the steering wheel like the claws of a perching bird. Le Bon flung open the passenger door and rolled out. In a second he had gone round to the back of the van. Marguerite was there before him.
Eve crawled out of the passenger-side door and dropped to the ground. She had never felt so scared in her life. As she lay under the lorry, her pulse thumping in her ears, she became aware of the soldiers who were all silent and looking perplexed. Marguerite, her face red with anger, snatched a rifle from a very young soldier. The boy, looking stricken, suddenly rushed to some boulders and was sick. Le Bon helped Eve out from under the lorry. ‘OK?’
‘Yes. Is anyone hurt?’
Franpois Le Bon rolled his eyes. ‘Not that you’d notice. Some of these youngsters think these things are toys. He was cleaning his rifle, had a bullet up the spout and he didn’t know… didn’t know. Didn’t know the bloody thing was loaded!’
The boy soldier was humiliated before his comrades, the worst of punishments. Having bawled him out, Marguerite gave him a brief brush on his peachy cheek with her knuckles and told them all to get back into the truck.
They continued on to Valencia, with hot air and the smell of oil coming in through the hole in the windscreen. Occasionally they caught a whiff of oranges, passing a pile of the bright fruits by the roadside, then another and another. Some piles were great mountains from which came the very pungent smell of orange oil and rotting fruits.
‘Why is all this fruit going to waste?’ Eve asked. Le Bon shrugged but turned to ask Marguerite.
‘They say they are no good.’
They passed more and yet more oranges. When they saw a woman upending a cart and adding to an already enormous pile, Eve announced, ‘I’m going to stop. Can somebody ask?’
Marguerite and Le Bon quizzed a woman. Yes, she said, the oranges were useless, rotting. Yes, there had been a very good crop, but there was no transport. The crop was for the juicing factory, and the juicing factory was waiting for the oranges, but the trucks did not come last season. There was no petrol… perhaps no trucks… perhaps no drivers. The woman knew only that the oranges had ripened and the trucks had not come. She said that she had orange concentrate for barter.
They offered her half a bar of soap, five cigarettes and the rest of Señora Portillo’s oat biscuits. As an afterthought Eve climbed on to the van’s roof and dragged out some of the clothes.
The woman, who had offered them the shade of the family grove for their siesta, went ahead of the van, leading her donkey, the square of carbolic soap slipped into the pocket of Lord Lovecraft’s flamboyant brocade waistcoat.
Eve lay on her back resting but not sleeping, and in the sweltering heat, a little less powerful under the stumpy trees, she thought how strange it was that she had arrived with a medical team, was designated an ambulance-driver, yet here she was taking a siesta in an orange grove with members of the Spanish militia and a Canadian who wrote for a newspaper.
She looked through the pattern of strong, shiny leaves which scarcely moved. Of all places – an orange grove. A place she would have imagined to be full of mystery, full of the kind of energy and magnetism she had discovered in the depths of a woodland in England. There, she had once been as close to perfect happiness as she ever expected to get. There, she had seen ecstasy personified. There she had taken part in a ritual in which she and Bar – the girl who had been her heart-bound friend – had wound a spell for themselves. As she watched the leaves and smelled the sweet perfume of the orange blossom, she visualized the two of them as they had been on her twelfth birthday, two naked girls winding themselves like silkworms inside a cocoon of their own virginal spells, then, face to face and clutching one another, they leaped into a deep pool of cool green water.
When Bar had left their enchanted place and come to live in the city, she had wound another cocoon, but this time around herself and Ray and Ray’s baby. A cocoon for three. The baby was due soon, and its aunt was lying flat on her back in an orange grove. This suddenly seemed so significant that Eve needed to record it lest she forget the essence of this, her first truly deep thoughts about things she had left behind, or run away from.
Although she had kept a diary since that summer in the birch woods with Bar, she had never felt so compelled to write as she did now. She withdrew from her haversack a leather-bound book of blank sheets as strong and light as air-mail paper. This was the only indulgence she had allowed herself when she was preparing to leave England, apart from the useless silk gown crushed into a sponge-bag. Paper was in very short supply here, so she was teaching herself to write tidily, clearly and minutely. It would not be easy, for it was in her nature to throw her heavy writing down on the page, dashing long crossings on Ts and finishing off with whips any letters that looped below the line.
After about two hours’ rest they all returned to the lorry which was still uncomfortably hot. Before they set off again, Eve sat on the running-board where she could survey the whole scene: the orange mountain, Marguerite and the young members of the militia, and the valley in which neat orange groves were already growing next year’s crop. About the only thing she had known about the growing of oranges was that the trees could hold fruit and blossom at the same time – and now she had seen that.
The boy who had fired off the bullet close to her face sat quietly, a little apart, rolling a green orange between his hands. He took off his cap and wiped the rim. He could hardly be out of school, no age to be a soldier. But he was at the age for idealism. Yes. She knew how it was to want to do something.
François Le Bon came over and offered a cigarette. Eve hesitated. ‘I don’t like taking yours, they’re in short supply, aren’t they?’
‘You can say that again. It’s OK, you can give me one next.’ He leaned idly against the side of the hot van, looking across the lines of orange trees. ‘This is how I always imagined Spain must be. Just because of the marmalade. You know, Seville oranges. I just love marmalade, so I know I would love Spain.’
‘I think I know what you mean.’
‘I saw you writing.’
Eve nodded. ‘Just for myself. There are things I don’t want to leave to memory in case they fade.’
‘Do you write a lot?’
‘Most days. I’ve been doing it since I was twelve… almost can’t help it now.’
‘Uh-huh, it’s like that. I don’t know what to do when I get near the end of a notebook and I can’t find anywhere to get another. I’ve even taken to turning the book round and writing across that way in red pencil.’
‘I suppose there’s a shortage of a lot of things.’
‘Quite a lot. Paper especially. I always buy essentials even when I haven’t actually run out.’
‘You can tell I’m new to Spain, can’t you?’
‘You’re doing OK. None of us foreigners can call ourselves a veteran. The International Brigade wasn’t formed till last October. What gives you away is this.’ He touched the fold of her right arm just below where her shirt-sleeve was rolled up. She winced. ‘Truck-drivers here get one arm browner than the other, right-hand drive truck, right arm suntanned. You want to take care. Takes a while for us fair ones to harden up. Sun gets me on the back of the neck. I guess I could do with one of those caps like they wear in the Foreign Legion. I carry a tin of cooking soda and a little bottle of water. Let me put some on for you?’
The cooking soda was cool. She liked Le Bon with his taciturn, unshakable manner. She liked Marguerite with her rolled-up sleeves, her neckerchief and tassled military cap. She liked the young soldiers, Jose, Diego, Miguel, Cip, Juan, Andreu and Marco, the careless boy.
‘I was writing about the waistcoat, I was told it once belonged to Lord Lovecraft.’
‘“Lord Lovecraft’s Waistcoat” – a play in three acts. Is there a story?’
‘Not really. I stopped over in Paris on my way here, to pick up a van and some clothes from one of the aid committees. The waistcoat stood out like a parakeet at a barn owl show.’
Had that happened only days ago? It seemed to be weeks since she had spent the evening sorting clothing in the O’Dells’ Paris flat.
The soldiers were dropped off at a depot on the outskirts of Albacete. As the men were off-loading their gear and the bottles of concentrate, Marco hurriedly pushed a little package into her hand. ‘Abuela, Abuela,’ he said, and was gone.
Le Bon examined the little kerchief. ‘Abuela means grandmother… I guess she must have made it for him. You’re not Roman Catholic, then? It’s the Sacred Heart. On a piece of cloth like this, it becomes a kind of talisman, lucky charm, worn close to the breast for protection.’
‘I can’t keep it. He believes in it.’
‘Don’t… he must want you to have it.’
She didn’t like the idea of the boy going off to fight without his grandmother’s charm.
She had reached Albacete at last.
Albacete is an ancient garrison town where General Franco was born, and in which he had succeeded in establishing power until he was overthrown by an uprising of local people. In spite of Albacete’s fervently Republican spirit, there were still small enclaves of that other spirit in hiding, still believing in the Generalissimo as a Christian Nationalist, and not as a friend of the fascist countries. Still in the city, little pockets of his followers spread rumours and half-tmths and truths about communist atrocities, anarchist desecrations and military command from Moscow. Spying, sniping from windows, the Albacete fascists had not given up.
Le Bon, no longer making notes, followed the street-plan. ‘Will you just look at this place. Looks as though the streets haven’t been swept for months.’
True, the streets were a mess, and roughly painted slogans and posters seemed to cover every bit of wall space. But it was of little consequence to Eve. She had made it! From home to London to Paris to Perpignan to Barcelona and now at last Albacete. As she watched Le Bon, the last of her passengers, alight she experienced a sense of achievement. She had driven a big, heavy lorry with passengers and supplies, on roads that were strange to her, and arrived in Albacete in one piece. If she impressed no one else, she impressed herself.
The section of the transport depot to which she was to deliver her Aid to Spain gift truck was in the charge of a woman called Mrs Alexander. In another life, she might have appeared on the inside cover of Country Life magazine wearing a white dress and gardenias. In the depot, where Eve found her, she wore brown corduroy trousers, a man’s shirt and tennis shoes. Her accent would have suited the BBC beautifully, but her drooping fag and raised oil-can were something else. Eve, with her tendency to make snap judgements, did not take to her. It was the accent which grated.
‘Oh, you’re the driver. Marvellous! Can we do with you.’ She went to shake hands (‘Christ, what a mess!’), and wiped her palm on her behind. ‘Helan, with an “a” not an “e”, Alexander. People call me Alex,’ she said, removing her cigarette carefully with greasy thumb and fingertips.
‘Eve Anders.’
‘OK, Anders, any problems getting here?’
‘No.’
‘I gather you brought down one of our favourite doctors – François Le Bon.’
‘A doctor? He said he wrote for his local paper.’
‘Maybe he does, he’s out here with a field unit. I believe that in Canada he’s known best for the neat way he amputates. A specialist. Isn’t wasted out here.’
All those hours spent together on the drive down yet, even in their moment of sharpness about what she did back home, he hadn’t given a clue about what he really did himself.
‘Beauties, aren’t they?’ Alexander patted the olive-coloured truck whose engine she had been tinkering with. ‘Straight off the production line. Best of British engineering. Ever driven a Bedford?’
‘No, but I wouldn’t mind the chance.’
‘Ha! The chaps wouldn’t care for that.’ She lovingly rubbed the headlamp glass with a clean rag.
‘The roads I came on were very good. I didn’t know what to expect. I would have guessed bad if anyone had asked me.’
‘Doesn’t do to pre-judge anything in this country. The main road and rail systems are mostly good, one of the great achievements of this government. Different in the remoter regions; mountain tracks are absolute hellers.’
She didn’t smile much. Eve’s first impression was that she might not be an easy person to work with, probably used to giving orders.
‘Look inside. Hospitals on wheels. Aren’t they super? A real bloody shame about the mud and blood. Will you be all right about that?’
‘I shan’t know until I’m in it, and then it won’t be any use saying no. I’ll manage.’
‘No bloody good out here if you don’t. Sit in, see how it feels.’
As soon as she got behind the wheel, Eve knew that she would have no trouble driving it. It was high seated and the steering wheel was large. There was a strange feeling of luxury, considering their purpose. ‘I’d be all right with one of these. They’re made for legs as long as mine.’
‘Made for men. Can’t take it to the local garage and have pedal blocks made. We don’t get many women drivers… a couple of Americans, they’re good, but they had to bash their way in. Their chaps got really fucked up about it. Might get you on delivering repaired vehicles.’
‘Do you drive them yourself?’
‘Mostly I push around bits of paper, essential to smooth running, of course. What I like is to just bugger about with a spanner and oil-rag. But we all have to do anything we can. Anything. I’ll come out with you in the morning, see how things go with you. Better take your things over to the Starlight Hotel, bag your place in the dorm.’
‘Starlight Hotel?’
‘You’ll see.’
In its more elegant days the Starlight Hotel, Eve decided, must have been a dance-hall or a cinema. The half-circle flight of marble steps and the chrome trim and push-bars to the swing doors were still in place, the foyer still echoed but now with heavier shoes and studs. The first-floor dormitories and rooms were reached by a curved stair with a brass handrail that was now kept shiny only by the many hands that skidded over its surface as young women hurried in and out.
It was not very clean, or convenient, the alterations having been made piecemeal and not always very well. Partitions had been erected, probably to give an impression of privacy, but as eight or ten women were housed, if that was the word, within each area, Eve wondered if it might have been less chaotic without them. One thing, though, putting up in a place like the Starlight Hotel reinforced the impression that this was a very different life.
She awakened just as the sky was growing light. Cool air carrying petrol and exhaust fumes blew across her from the open window, and although she hadn’t been kept awake, she was aware that the sound of vehicles hadn’t stopped all night. Alexander’s warning that there were snipers active in the town wasn’t an idle one; several times she was aroused briefly by the crack of a rifle.
Four of the other beds in the makeshift dormitory were now occupied but none of the occupants stirred. Last night they had come together briefly as they stepped round one another’s gear, two Swedish administrative clerks and two English nurses, Smart and Haskell, old hands in Spain and long-time friends. None of them seemed particularly curious about the newcomer.
On each of the spare beds was a thin, rolled-up mattress, a brown blanket and a pillow. It was the first time in her life that Eve had slept in a room with strangers. Dormitories had been the centre of the action in the girls’ school stories she had devoured as a child, but this one was dedicated to nothing but sleep and a quick wash and brushup.
It was full daylight when Eve reached the depot for her test run. She turned the key in the ignition and the engine started at once. Alexander climbed into the passenger seat, Eve put the gears into reverse and carefully rolled the vehicle out of the line.
‘Want me to see you out?’ Alexander asked.
‘I think I’ll be all right.’
‘Only think? This is valuable piece of equipment.’
Eve gave her a sharp glance, refusing to be intimidated. ‘No. I shall be all right.’ And she was, although it was heavier than the van she had brought in from France and the truck she had driven down from Barcelona. Alexander gave her terse but straightforward directions out of the compound, through more of Albacete’s unswept streets, then out of the town and on to roads which eventually became little more than unsurfaced rocky tracks.
Eve soon realized that as well as looking in the wing-mirror and keeping an eye on the road ahead, Alexander was watching her every manoeuvre. As they rounded a bend they were confronted by a mule drawing a little cart, bang in the centre of the road. She didn’t brake hard, but slowed down a few yards behind and waited to see if a driver appeared. Alexander made no comment, seeming content for Eve to follow behind slowly. It wasn’t by any means the first time that Eve had been in this situation; she had cut her driving teeth following some badly-maintained tractor, or a herd of cows, or a hay wagon along English country lanes.
‘Down here… turn off right at the next… that’s it.’
Alexander kept Eve driving, reversing, tight turning in narrow lanes, for an hour. ‘OK. Turn it off. Pretty good, Anders. Hop out, stretch your legs for ten minutes. It can get you in the calf muscles until you become used to it.’
Except for an occasional distant roll of thunder, everywhere was as quiet and peaceful as an English summer day, and the rural landscape quite as empty of people. But here there was no patchwork of fields neatly marked by hedges, here the undulations of the dry-looking, craggy land were not easily rolling like those at home. Yet it was beautiful.
‘Sounds like a thunder-storm brewing.’
‘Shelling – German big guns most likely – a good few kilometres from here. Sound carries on the dry air.’
Helan Alexander, unconcerned, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly. Hooves pounded, and the heads of a beautiful gelding and a mule appeared, snorting, over a low hedge. She pulled a couple of crusts from a pocket and fed them to the animals as she told them in a low voice what beautiful boys they were.
The big horse was certainly beautiful. When Eve fondled its muzzle, it quivered.
‘You like horses, Anders?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Arab belonged to the big house up there, but when the owner pushed off to Africa, he had to leave his animals to fend for themselves. Well, just one old chappie sees to them. This is the last one, it’s only a matter of time before he ends up in the pot. I’m surprised he’s lasted so long.’
‘He?’
‘Why not? Never does to remind a male of the species he’s lost his balls.’
In spite of her upbringing in a poor area of a poor city, it wasn’t difficult to shock Eve Anders whose education had been in an Anglican Church school.
‘Know much about them?’
‘I like to ride.’
‘Pity there’s no saddle. I reconnoitred the stables, most of the tack has gone.’
‘I didn’t have a saddle when I learned to ride.’
Alexander turned and looked, as though seeing Eve for the first time. ‘Now that, Anders, really impresses me.’ She nodded to the horse and its companion mule. ‘Why don’t you? He might be cottage pie the next time you see him.’
‘Are you serious? You are.’
‘Good protein, not a lot of it about. Go on, let’s see what you can do.’
It seemed ages since Eve had been on a horse, but the curve of that beautiful back, even though it hadn’t seen a curry comb in months, was inviting. The mule kept a close watch as Eve mounted from the gate. Holding the unkempt mane low down its neck, she kneed the well-behaved animal forward to a slow walk, rising and falling as easily as she had done six years ago, the little mule moving in and keeping close. Eve talked encouragingly in a low, quiet voice as Bar Barney had taught her, ‘Good dobbin – good dobbin – good dobbin.’ She didn’t go far, aware of Alexander leaning over the gate watching, and the big Bedford heating up in the morning sunshine.
‘You do it very prettily, Anders. Where did you learn to ride like that?’
Starting with a clean sheet, a new name and no past but confronted with a direct question, it was not easy to reply. ‘Oh, I used to spend school holidays on my aunt’s farm.’
Now, as she made her way to the depot to eat and receive her instructions, she thought about ‘my aunt’s farm’, and wondered what Alexander had made of that. In the world of the Alexander family, a farm would mean several thousand acres, part of a large estate. But the truth about her aunt’s farm had been in there somewhere. Mrs Alexander could think what she liked.