Eve Anders and Ozz Lavender were three days at the El Goloso hospital before they moved on. Now driving flat-bed supply trucks back to the depot for overhaul, they were guarded by the same small personnel carrier and some of the men who had accompanied them from Albacete. Armed guards. This time the leader was a short, dark Spaniard. He made a thumbs-up and Ozz signalled that the rest were ready. ‘OK, chief, let wagons roll. You wan’a go next, Andy? I’ll bring up the rear.’ Their journey took them back in the direction from which they had come, then towards the Sierra de Alcaraz to the south-west. They drove until evening when they reached a small town and followed the lead truck into the back of a hostal where Eve gladly climbed out of her cab to flex her aching knees.
Ozz said, ‘Looks OK. Come on, follow the boys.’
Without ceremony their uniformed companions went inside. ‘It looks like a regular hotel. What do we do about paying?’
‘Leave it to our compadres, they know how it works. I guess they’ve stopped here before. There’s petrol pumps across the road, we need to fill up.’ He lit the stub of a cigarette and stood looking up at the yellow, sandy walls of the building.
An elderly woman in black appeared, bobbing her head and holding her palms apart in a gesture of welcome. The woman directed them to a back-room where their Spanish companions were already removing their jackets and stretching their arms. Sharing with them was something Eve had not anticipated, but she placed her canvas bag against the wall, opened it and fetched out a comb and face-cloth which she held up to the woman, saying hesitantly, ‘Lavar… por favor?’
The woman smiled and indicated for Eve to pick up her bag and follow her. Up two flights of narrow stairs Eve found herself in a narrow room with a narrow window and a narrow bed. The woman took her bag, deposited it on a cane chair and pointed to a jug and basin. Having taken a look into a narrow cupboard, which was empty, she smiled and left.
They had a satisfying meal of stew in which the beans overwhelmed the meat. The soldiers talked all through the meal, laughing with one another and with various people who came to lean against the door. Sometimes they engaged in a kind of quick-fire discussion which was entirely beyond Eve’s understanding. Ozz interpreted, and it appeared that the conversation was not very different from what it would have been anywhere. Anything new? Where have you come from? How were the roads? Sierra de Alcaraz? You should take this road, not that, too many bends. No, I say they should keep to the new road.
The light went and no sooner were Eve’s shoes and jacket off and her legs stretched out gratefully on the hard little mattress than she fell into a deep sleep. Before dawn she was woken by men’s voices in the yard. The Spanish driver was already under the bonnet of his vehicle, topping up the radiator. She made her bed, took away her washing water and refilled the jug. They left the hotel with exchanges of salutes, and then drove out of the town in the first light of morning.
They stopped on a high point from where it was possible to see across an arid-looking plain to an even higher point.
Ozz gestured. ‘The Sierra de Alcaraz.’
To Eve, the sight was breathtaking. The English landscape she was used to bore no comparison to the Alcaraz valley which appeared vast and infertile. But the barrenness was illusion, for the entire vista, including the slopes of the mountains, was practically one huge olive grove. A mule-cart trailed dust as it followed a narrow meandering road. The wider highway took a more direct route across the flat plain and then disappeared behind a wood of trees that were darker and much taller than the olives – spruce or pine perhaps. Except for these roadways, none of the land was left uncultivated.
This journey – Albacete to El Goloso to Ayna in the Sierra de Alcaraz – gave Eve Anders the confidence she needed. She was now sure that she could drive anything, anywhere. She had covered hundreds of kilometres, but where was the war? She had transported supplies and people, she had seen ravaged towns and she had heard, in the distance, the sound of shelling, but she fretted to be at the front. Whatever Helan Alexander had said about the importance of what she had been doing until now, it was not the kind of war work she had envisaged doing when she volunteered. There were women on the front line, nurses picking up the pieces and putting men back together again, there were ammunition lorries and ambulances to be driven. The extraordinary beauty of the Sierra de Alcaraz was well and good, and the quaintness of meandering mule-carts stirred emotions and gave an impression of being at one with the people, but they had nothing to do with the real events that were going on without her.
Another dawn. Another village. Eve was the first of their little group to be up and about. Dolores, a nurse, the daughter of the proprietors of the little hostal in which they had spent the night, had asked for a lift back to her medical unit. She had shared her narrow bed with Eve, sleeping one at each end. Eve looked forward to her company and had gone down early to clear any debris from the passenger seat. Dolores was neat as could be, with blue-black hair strained back into a shining bun, and Eve would have been ashamed to have offered her less than a spick-and-span cab. She checked the oil, it was low, topped up the radiator and refilled the jerry-can, wiped the tacky grime from the big steering wheel and tucked a wet face-flannel in a sponge-bag where she could reach it. She knew from experience that it would neither cool nor refresh once the heat of the roads started to rise and heat up the cab, but the moisture gave the impression that it did.
It was still hardly light when she had finished her check. The Spanish guard came down, his boots unlaced, wearing only his khaki trousers, the webbing braces hitched over his shoulders. He saluted, then swung round and slapped his forehead with the flat of his hand. In gestured English he apologized for not wearing a shirt.
‘It’s OK. I don’t mind. I have brothers… hermano… two brothers.’ She held up two fingers.
‘I also. Antonio. Julian.’ He gestured a query.
‘Ralph. Kenneth.’ She gestured, ‘Bigger… older than me.’
He gestured: Antonio a bit taller than himself, Julian very tall, indicating with flicks of his bunched fingers that his brothers were eighteen and twenty. He grinned, seemingly as pleased as she at this exchange, then patted his own head, spreading his knees, making himself even shorter. ‘Florentin.’
It was a joke, for the name was so unsuited to such a squat and burly man, but it was also a breakthrough. Throughout the journey she had noticed him watching her manoeuvres with the flat-bed lorry very critically, and assumed that he disapproved of a woman doing a man’s job. She had thought for some time that there were far too many barriers that kept ordinary people apart, and it was true.
She fetched water and topped up the radiator of his personnel-carrier, then washed the layer of insects and dust from the windscreen, while he removed the plugs and cleaned them.
Ozz came out to check his own lorry, so that by the time the smell of beans and chilli wafted across to them, the sky had lightened. Florentin, who, Eve suspected, was probably the family clown, bent his knees and, twirling an imaginary cane, offered her his arm. He shuffled along with his feet at ten-to-two. ‘Charlie Chaplin!’ He made a sweeping bow. ‘Dietrich.’
Ozz, who was following, wiping black greasy hands on a rag, said, ‘Too right, Florrie! Marlene, but younger.’ There were not making a pass, there was nothing to disturb Eve’s feeling of security that had grown steadily. Growing up as she had in a military and naval town, she had developed a sixth sense about men, and she trusted these two completely.
Eve felt good. It was a beautiful morning and she was involved in something momentous. She and Ozz shared a cigarette while Florentin and his men drove across the road to the petrol pump. Children who had gathered to wait for the school bus turned their attention to the soldiers and the lorry. All were black-haired and brown-eyed in this small village.
‘What is it about Spanish children, aren’t they beautiful?’
‘Real little charmers.’
‘And the young women, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many really lovely young women.’
‘It don’t last. They marry too young, have too many kids, work too hard.’
Eve mimicked his accent. ‘Well ain’t that the truth the world over.’
‘So you ain’t all goody-goody then, Andy?’
‘I ain’t goody-goody at all, Ozz. I have a bland face that tells lies. Don’t be fooled by it.’
‘You got Florrie going all right. He thinks you’re the cat’s whiskas.’
‘We had a long talk. He has two brothers. I have two brothers. It took us ten minutes to exchange that bit of information.’
Ozz, as usual, filled waiting time making new smokes from old. Eve watched the guards teasing the children. A youth standing in a cart drawn by a blunt-faced mule flicked it up to the little shed which was hung about with an odd assortment of bald tyres. The mule drank from a bucket of water, a facility for filling radiators. Several of the smaller children went to pet the mule. A woman carrying a large basket sauntered along the road and called something to the young mule-driver. He frowned. Was she his mother wanting him to do something for her? Something too demeaning for him, such as giving her a lift into town?
The little girls’ dresses, although clean, were unironed, threadbare and patched. Eve had gone to school like that for years, unaware that there was any other kind of school clothes. She had seldom actually been ragged, and never naked underneath as some of her classmates had been, but her skirts were made from remnants and the best bits of other skirts. That alone was reason enough for any girl with spirit and a liking for nice things to want to escape the drab meanness of that kind of life. And that, too, was one of the reasons why she had become Eve Anders, a free and independent woman. Now that she had lived in Spain, she was sure she could never go back and live under the dingy, dreary skies of England. She would stay here, where the sun shone, where bare-arsed children were not chilled to the marrow. She pinched out the cigarette and added it to Ozz’s cache.
It must have been the sound of the tractor labouring in a field on the other side of the hedge that hid the sound of the aeroplanes.
Suddenly, air was sucked up around them. Without warning there was a devastating explosion. Eve’s ear-drums hurt, yet she automatically turned towards the direction of the violence. Then, as the blast struck, she was knocked back into the open door of Ozz’s lorry, hitting her spine on something hard. Unbelievable things were in flight. A mule’s head. A basket. A child. She heard a bellow, but it was cut short when the little petrol station went up in a great sheet of flame. She got to her feet seconds before Ozz. The fierceness of the blazing petrol and oil made it impossible to get anywhere near the centre of the chaos. People came running from God knew where. She saw Dolores, still not in uniform, carrying a khaki haversack imprinted with a red cross which she unbuckled as she ran.
For a brief second Eve caught sight of Florentin. The little clown who had been Charlie Chaplin was hanging, like a mangled scarecrow, in the fiercely burning debris of his vehicle, then in a second, as the petrol tank exploded, he was gone. There was no sign of the other guards. But there was of the children. Some of the children. Bits of the children. Perhaps the ones who had gone to pet the mule weighed less and were blown away from the fire by the bomb blast, perhaps it was luck, or fate, or even God. Three of them lay spread-eagled yards along the road, not moving. Pieces of the roof of the mechanic’s little shack were draped across them like corrugated iron blankets. Eve ran to them and heaved the hot metal away. One moved, a little girl probably, but who could tell?
In seconds, it seemed, although it must have been longer, other people too were carrying the injured, conscious and unconscious, blistered, burned black, red raw, blood gushing, oozing, trickling, eyes open, eyes closed, eyes missing. It was a vivid silent horror movie, yet more horrific than anything a film-maker could fake. Silent. The child’s mouth made a shape for screaming, but no sound came. One entire side of its body was burned from neck to ankle. Eve wanted to give comfort, but wherever she touched, skin and flesh came away.
Suddenly, Ozz, bare to the waist, came into her field of vision. He looked at the child on her lap, covered his eyes for a second and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Ozz, find some water.’ She said the words but no sound came. Even so he was there in seconds with a pail of water which she ladled over the child with her free hand. Ozz’s face loomed again mouthing silent words. She seemed unable to make sense of anything. He pointed to her ears. Deaf!
Then Dolores, her half-made plait disintegrating, her white shirt filthy, brought a small bottle and a hypodermic needle. She said something. Ozz told her that Eve couldn’t hear, so Dolores showed her the bottle. Morphine in any language is recognizable. It took effect at once, and as the child’s mouth sagged Dolores picked the child up and handed it to Ozz who gestured, with a nod of his head, that Eve should follow. As she stood up, all hell was let loose. A dreadful explosion of sound, of cries, and screams, of voices shouting orders, of thin terrifying wails, loud crackling flames and fading timbers.
She would probably never know how long she had sat cradling the child, but while she had been doing so Dolores’ mother and the other women of the place had dragged mattresses from the bedrooms and laid them in the backs of the flat-bed trucks. They now brought out pillows, towels and lengths of torn sheeting. One of the older women brought a black shawl and tied it around Eve’s shoulders. Was it so that the man without a foot should not look on her brassiere? Or was it an old woman not knowing what else to do but what she had always done to protect an unclothed young woman. I’m mad. We’re all insane, nothing is worth this. Nothing.
It was clear that neither she nor Ozz was in a fit state to drive such dreadfully injured casualties in the make-shift ambulances, but they could drive and the trucks were undamaged. Dolores did not travel in the cab, but, with the assistance of two elderly women, knelt doing what she could to alleviate the suffering. Where had they all come from? Standing by Ozz’s truck, Eve had noticed only the soldiers, the boy and the children. There must have been people working in the fields. There had been a tractor. And there had been a woman with a basket, what had happened to her? From time to time, they had to stop to allow Dolores to change trucks. Ozz and Eve didn’t speak. If she looked as dreadful as he did, then she must look tormented and half-dead. Before Dolores climbed into the back of Eve’s truck, Eve pinned up the nurse’s hair and gave her the wetted towel to wipe her face and arms.
‘Not drive slow, now. Very quick. Villa Luna. Leetle few kilometres.’ She pointed ahead.
Ozz leaned out, signalled that he was going on and called back, ‘Fifteen minutes maximum, Andy.’
‘I’m afraid to drive too quickly.’
‘Quick, doloroso, doloroso, ah pain!’ Dolores held up the morphine bottle which was empty. ‘Villa Luna ees, ah, Gran Bretana. Yes?’
‘Yes. English hospital?’
Dolores climbed into the truck. ‘We go.’
‘OK. Dolores? The child?’ She indicated the burns with a sweep of her hands.
Dolores’ reply was incomprehensible. There was no time to make concessions to foreigners who needed a dictionary. Eve recognized something: sangre, blood. She shut out everything except her driving. The road was a good one, so they drove fast. Blood transfusion.
Someone had telephoned ahead, so that when they reached the Villa Luna nurses and orderlies were ready with stretchers. There were sixteen casualties. The last four to be lifted from the trucks went in with sheets covering their faces. None of them was a child.
As soon as the casualties had been taken inside, she and Ozz set about sponging the stained mattresses with salt water and putting them in the sun to dry. Silently they foraged for something to drink. Carrying their enamel mugs of tea into which spoonfuls of condensed milk had been stirred, they discovered, to their surprise, a most beautiful garden beyond the surfaced parking area. It was almost wild, untended except for a patch of grass that might once have been a small lawn which had been scythed like a hayfield, and on its hard terraces weeds fought garden plants for space. It was both welcoming and comforting. So, what with that and the scent of the hay and hot earth, Eve was momentarily stabbed by a memory from way back. She tried to ignore her thoughts and lifted the welcome mug of tea to her mouth, but when the scent of that too reached her, she found it difficult to swallow.
Every morning used to start with her elder brother brewing a large pot of tea into which they would stir condensed milk. Ray would give her the spoon to lick as she watched him fasten his shirt stud. Then Ken would rush down at the last minute, slopping tea over the oil-cloth table-cover in his haste, and dash out of the house holding a slice of thick bread between his teeth while he combed his hair. She would write home today. Maybe by now Ray would have heard from Ken and have some idea of where he was. Maybe by now Ken would have received her letter saying that she too was in Spain.
‘OK, Andy?’ Ozz’s gentle voice broke into her thoughts.
‘Yeah, yeah. I’m OK. How about you?’
‘OK. I’ve done a fair old bit of driving ambulances. Never gets no better, and that’s for sure.’
She looked at her wrist-watch, then put it to her ear. ‘Is that all it is?’
‘Yeah. Seems like it’s been ages.’
‘I suppose we should report in to Alex.’
‘I gave the old guy at the hotel her number. I don’t know if he understood, I asked him to ring the number and just say that Ozz had gone to the hospital at Huete. I think that’s where we are. Let’s scrounge something to eat. If we don’t get a call by then, we’ll ring her. Sure you’re OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I’ll check with the admin, see if Alex has been on, then get a bit of something inside us then.’
More beans and chilli, but this time with generous sweet tomatoes, basil and garlic.
Although Villa Luna was an English base hospital, it seemed to be staffed with a representative of every one of the United Nations. While they were waiting for their food, a woman’s voice with a Yorkshire accent came from behind them. ‘It looks like you two have been in a bit of a ruck.’ A middle-aged woman with straight, iron-grey hair clipped back unceremoniously looked directly at them from behind round, heavy lenses. She held out a hand. ‘Jean Pook.’
Eve looked down at herself, then ran her fingers through her hair. ‘A bomb on some petrol pumps.’
‘Were that it? I took the call. They’re saying it was Eyetie planes, shouldn’t wonder. If that’s how Mussolini is training this crack air-force of his, shows what a dirty lot they are. It’s one thing dropping bombs where the fighting is, it’s a dirty dog that uses a village for target practice.’
‘What is this place?’ Ozz asked.
As soon as her behind hit the bench, Jean Pook started to eat with great gusto. ‘I think it were once a monastery, but before it was given over to us lot it was called a presbytery. I think that’s a school for lads who want to be priests. A lot of dormitories, just right for a hospital.’
‘I thought it didn’t look much like a villa.’
‘Aye, well, that’s the English for you. Story goes, the advance party took down the sign, and because there were larks singing some romantic joker decided to call it House of Larks. I think that was it. Anyway, like the rest of us Brits who can’t talk to foreigners without our pocket dictionaries, this lad couldn’t tell his lunas from his alondras. Bie! This farty food gets fiercer by the day. I love it. Know now why they say, feeling full of beans. Well that’s me! Look, me lass, you’ve never seen nowt like some of the ablutions here, especially in the part used for staff and the like, but if you want to have a pee and a wash-up, best place is end of corridor on first floor. Mostly urinals there, but there’s some of our sort. Tek no notice who comes in, man or beast, just carry on wi’ what you’re doing. It’s called egalitarianism – or equality if you’re in the fourpenny seats. Well, I’d better get back to work.’
When she had gone, Eve and Ozz looked at one another and smiled a little. Ozz said, ‘I feel better. Do you reckon it was the sweet tea or her?’
‘Treatment for shock? Oh, her. Definitely her. I’m going to try and get through to Alex.’
In the best peeing and washing place on the first floor, Eve filled a hand-basin with cold water and washed her face and head in it, unnoticed by man or beast. She ran a comb through her wet hair.
‘That’s better.’ Jean Pook, the woman who liked beans, was operating the small telephone switchboard. ‘Is your name Lavender?’
‘No, that’s the other driver.’
‘OK, one of you is to call this Albacete number. Want me to get it for you?’
It was the Auto-Parc and Alexander’s extension number. Eve nodded. Jean spoke fluent Spanish. She was no dozy Brit in need of a pocket dictionary. Eve was. She had been pretty useless in the emergency.
‘You’re through.’
The line to Albacete was clear, as was Alex’s upper-class voice. ‘Anders? This is Alex.’
‘Yes, Alex.’
‘Are you and Ozz OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God! Some old chappie phoned here, said what happened. Pretty bloody awful.’
‘It was, and if you don’t mind I don’t want to talk about it just now.’
‘OK. Good thing Ozz had the second truck, he’s a good chum when things get hot. Now listen, you leave the lorries at Villa Luna. They’re to hold on to them pending news from Madrid.’
‘God above, Alex! Why is it that every order is countermanded?’
‘It’s war, darling.’
In the short silence that followed, Eve saw Alexander in her mind’s eye, one eye closed against the smoke, sucking on the flattened end of her cigarette. ‘I don’t need you to remind me, I’ve got it all over my shirt. Darling.’
‘If there isn’t a shower, get somebody to pour a bowl of water over you. Put on some clean knickers and socks. Wash what you were wearing this morning and lay it in the sun. The stains won’t go, but it will get rid of the stink. Do it. That’s an order. Are you still there? Good! And for God’s sake, Anders, don’t get so touchy about taking orders. Sure as hell, I’m not the one to give them, but that’s how it works for now. Perhaps you’d like to try deciding which of the ten demands for transport gets the one free truck that’s fit to be on the road. Now, put Ozz on.’
Eve would probably have burst into tears had she tried to answer, so she just thrust the earpiece back at the switchboard operator.
‘Want me to call your man on the Tannoy?’
Eve realized that Jean Pook had heard Alexander’s dressing down. She nodded. ‘Ozz Lavender.’
She sat on the stairs facing the desk where Ozz was taking the call. Every now and then he would glance in her direction and he smiled a lot, but Eve would have bet that he was getting agitated by whatever Alex was saying. He dived into his shirt pocket and took out a new cigarette, feeling about his other pockets absently for a light. She was about to offer her own lighter, but Jean got there first. She winked at Eve, then raised her eyebrows and made a moue, obviously listening in to the Albacete call, all the while pulling out some plugs and inserting others.
When he finished, Jean started to say something but Ozz put up a stiff and commanding hand. ‘Don’t! If y’don’t mind, I’ll handle it.’ She smiled and shrugged.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Eve.
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘What do you mean, I don’t want to know?’
‘Alex give you orders? Instructions?’
‘She told me to take off my dirty clothes and get somebody to pour water over me.’
‘She’s right, Andy, it’s what you should do.’
He handed her his cigarette upon which she drew thankfully and didn’t hand it back. ‘I want to find out about those people we brought in. We can’t just go.’
‘We can. Now, are you going to let me have another drag on the ciggie?’
‘Ciggie is such a damned silly word for a grown man to use.’
‘Well, sweetheart, it’s an uncontrovertible fact of life that Aussies smoke ciggies because of the mozzies. Y’see, cigarettes just don’t scan.’
She didn’t want to see herself as only a gun-runner; she wanted to be involved in what they did. She scowled at him, unwilling to give up her mood. ‘That little kid. I have to find out whether it… if it… if they saved it.’
‘It’s not what we do, Andy. We ferry the bully-beef, we run the guns, sometimes we get to drive the ambulances. We don’t cook the stew or shoot off the rifles. We just off-load the goods, turn around and go back for more. It’s called truck-driving, Andy. It’s what we do.’ They were back outside again, and the heat from the stone terrace leaped up at them.
‘For God’s sake, Clive, those were injured people, not goods.’
‘Bloody sure they were! You think I don’t know it! What do you think one of them left behind in my truck? A finger. Not a very big one it’s true, but a finger. An injured person’s finger, most likely left behind by the woman with the basket. She threw herself around a bit before she got her shot from Dolores. I thought she might miss it, so I took it to a nurse. Sorry, she said, we’d put it back if we could, but the finger would only die and drop off again.’
His bitter put-down was the worst she had ever experienced. She had grown up knowing how to ignore the intended hurt. But this was not the same. This was rejection by a friend, an attack on her for insensitivity, for not seeing that his way of dealing with what they did was no less valid than her own. She felt sick at the thought. She had not realized how much she had grown to like him in such a short time.
But she stalked on towards the scythed grass, now bleached and dry, not knowing what to do.
Ozz threw himself down on the grass and stretched out flat on his back. She stood before him like a penitent. ‘When my mother was buried, I ran away from the graveside. The police came looking for me. My brothers were distraught and other people worried. I had a reputation for going off like a fire-cracker. It seemed OK till then. After that I saw that there was a dark side, a self-indulgent side. I vowed then that I would never go off in all directions without thinking. You can hurt people that way. And I’ve done it again. I’m sorry.’
He raised himself up on his elbows and looked at her. ‘You’re an OK kinda girl, Andy. My mam would have you round for Sunday tea like a shot.’
‘I mean it. I’m really sorry, Ozz.’
‘It’s OK, I was a bit hard on you. I got my black side too.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes. ‘Andy? Whyn’t you do as Alex says, and go get water poured over you? Your clobber’s a touch high.’
She sniffed her shirt. ‘Is it?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice.’
‘OK.’
‘Just go fetch your bag, and if you go round the end of that building with the tin roof, there’s a set-up of water and buckets that’ll just do the trick.’
Eve had the old Ozz back again.
The soap was so thin as to be almost transparent, but the water was soft and created a foamy lather.
For the first time Eve noticed how white her torso was compared to the skin that had been exposed to the sun – as Duke Barney’s had been that time when they were both young and she had seen him dive naked into the pool of green water. The sacred pool had been hers and Bar Barney’s till then. A surge of desire ran through her, and she was shocked that she had so little control over herself when only hours before she had been part of the most horrific scene imaginable. She closed her eyes and pulled gently on the rope, allowing a steady trickle of cool water to hit the crown of her head.
Not long before she left home, she and her old head-teacher, who had become her trusted friend, had talked for the first time as equals. They had exchanged confidences about sexual desire and lust without reaching any clear conclusions. Sexual desire, they decided, was such that one could manipulate it a little if one wished, encourage it. But lust, the older woman had postulated, lust was unstable, unpredictable; it was the first Mrs Rochester as Jane Eyre had encountered her, a creature of nature, of necessity best kept locked away, for if left unguarded it would burst out and destroy the happy home.
Letting go the bit of rope, she looked down at her white breasts. The cold trickle had done no good, she would have to put on a cotton bra under her shirt. Sex on the brain! There was no getting dry in the humid atmosphere of the shower-stalls. Trousers would stick to her legs, so she opted for a green cotton skirt and one of her checked shirts. The clothes that Ozz had complained of she had been squeezing under her feet as she showered. Now, as she was hanging them out over a make-shift washing line, along with a variety of men’s underpants, cotton petticoats, canvas trousers of unknown gender and an assortment of dark socks, she wondered what instructions Alex had given Ozz.
She found him chatting to a couple of men in white coats and a woman in nurse’s uniform. The four of them were standing beside the two flat-bed trucks, one of which was now piled high with what looked like the bedding they had brought with them. The medics moved off.
Without preamble Ozz said, ‘Now listen, Andy, you may not like this, and if you don’t then go and make your beef to Alex. It’s her idea.’
‘May not like what?’
‘Drive a big Mercedes.’
‘A what?’
‘A Mercedes saloon car.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s a Mercedes?’
‘Want to see one?’ She followed him to one of the many outhouses. ‘There! What d’you think?’
Garaged there was the largest and grandest car Eve had ever seen. Beneath mud and dust it was easy to see that the dull gleam of the radiator-grille and metal trims was of a high quality, but the bodywork had been sprayed or painted in red and black. Ozz opened the passenger door and bounced on the sprung seat. ‘Come on, get in.’
Sitting behind the leather-covered steering wheel she looked along the bonnet and then at the interior. Nothing had been done to spoil the hide covering or the walnut panels in which the many instruments were set. Eve’s experience of expensive motors was limited to a few drives with David and later with Duke, neither of whom had driven anything this luxurious. As with the Bedford lorries, one could see without turning the engine over that there was power under the bonnet, which was why she loved driving the big ambulances. Holding the steering wheel at ‘9.15’, she glanced in all the mirrors and touched the gear lever. Then she remembered that it was more than likely that Alex was about to move her about again, and began to feel irritated at Ozz for aiding and abetting.
‘Why didn’t Alex speak to me?’
‘You were in the shower-stalls.’
‘And she couldn’t wait, so she got you to soften me up for whatever it is she wants me to do. What, for Heaven’s sake, could anybody do with a thing like this.’ She smiled, trying to show Ozz that she didn’t blame him. ‘Come on, come on, I shan’t bite your head off.’
‘Well, I’m real glad of that. It’s going to be used for the ferrying of official visitors.’
‘What the hell kind of official visitors?’
‘MPs on fact-finding visits, Aid to Spain people, film people…’
Her first suspicion had not been wrong, then. Alex was palming her off again with a nice little job for a girl. ‘Hollywood stars who want something for Picturegoer?’
‘Crikey, Anders, you can be real prickly! No, people who make movies, propaganda for the Republic, the stuff that brings in the money to provide more ambulances and trained medical teams. They need to get to villages, up mountain passes. Hell’s bells! You know what I mean – people who want to go to some of the war zones. A substantial motor like a Mercedes is just the ticket.’
‘I’d be no good, I don’t speak any foreign languages.’
‘God help us, Anders, nobody expects the English to speak a foreign language! These people have interpreters. You’re the right man for the job.’
Disappointment welled up within her. She longed to be given something more heroic than this. ‘Damn it, Ozz, I came here to drive ambulances.’
‘OK. No skin off my nose. Go and ring Alex so at least we know what to do with these trucks.’
‘I will!’ Flicking out angrily with her wet towel, she stalked off, knowing that Ozz would be smiling and shaking his head as he watched her. Well then, be amused, I don’t care.
Alexander answered with her usual efficient, ‘Alexander!’
‘Driver Anders here.’
‘Are you feeling better? Ozz gave me a very graphic picture. It must have been hellish.’
‘It was. I’m feeling back to normal now that I’ve showered and changed, thank you. Ozz has tried to tell me that driving an elite few in this palace on wheels will help the cause.’
‘I wouldn’t agree on the elite few, but the rest is about right.’
‘I drive trucks and ambulances.’
‘I know that perfectly well, and very well. You’re as good as any – maybe not including Ozz, but he’s done more miles.’
‘So why take me off the job?’
‘Because I’m in a better position than you are to see which of my drivers is best suited to this particular work.’
She certainly had the capacity to put Eve’s back up, but Eve decided to remain calm. ‘It seems such a useless job.’
‘I think I’m the best judge of that. I have the facts and you do not. What if your orders were to ride a pure-bred Arabian to Madrid for stud use – without a saddle, of course.’
Eve felt that she was being backed into a corner from which there was only one way out: Alexander’s. ‘I’d still want to know if it was worthwhile – for the cause.’
‘Don’t be such a prig, Anders. You aren’t the only one with the cause at heart, some of us have it very close to our heart.’
‘Twice in a single day. Would I still drive ambulances?’
‘Of course. I can’t see that a VIP car will be in use every day. What is twice in one day?’
‘Being told I’m a prig.’
‘Does us all good to be told that sometimes. Twice in a day is a bit much, though. Ozz?’
‘Oh, never mind. All right, then, but on one condition.’
‘Anders, you can also be very difficult. I don’t bargain with my drivers.’
‘I just don’t want people calling it a VIP car, or referring to me as the chauffeur.’
Alex laughed. ‘I think we could come to some kind of accommodation over that. Who is it politicizing you, Anders? I’ve never heard you on the subject of elitism and privilege before today.’
‘You think I can’t do it by myself?’
‘I’m sure that you can.’
‘A child on fire concentrates the mind wonderfully.’
‘I’m sorry your initiation was so violent.’
Eve, suddenly, couldn’t answer.
‘Anders?’
‘OK. What are we going to do with the trucks?’
‘That’s fixed. Now this car, the Mercedes, is a commandeered vehicle.’
‘I’d never have guessed, all that red and black paint.’
‘It belonged to some industrialist who couldn’t take it on the plane when he scarpered to Italy. Now, Ozz can handle anything on wheels. The quickest way to get it on the road is for him to show you under the bonnet and then for you both to go for a good test run. Take a day’s leave.’
Ozz was waiting outside the shed with the car, using his time to advantage by making up his twice-used cigarettes.
‘How’d she change your mind?’
‘Something she said about horses.’
‘Horses. No wonder she’s taken a fancy to you.’
‘Fancy! She rubs me up the wrong way. Born-to-rule type. Even out here she’s giving the orders and we’re taking them.’
‘Ne’ mind, Andy, come the red revolution nobody’s going to give the orders.’
‘That’s not socialism, that anarchism.’ Ozz was about to say something. ‘And don’t ask who’s been politicizing me.’
‘I wasn’t going to, I was going to ask what horses have to do with it.’
‘It’s too long a story.’
‘She’s quite a horse-flesh fancier, has some back home called Hipsen-horses or something like that.’
‘Lippizaner. They’re the most valuable horses in the world.’
‘Oh, I think our Alex is loaded all right. I don’t suppose you’d like a roll-up.’
Eve eyed the salvaged tobacco. ‘I don’t suppose I would either, but thanks for the offer.’
He winked amiably. ‘You should taste it when you’re out of ciggie paper and there’s only your sheets of Izal.’
The events of that morning were not forgotten, but they were dealing with them as best they could by trying to return to normal.
Over the weeks at the depot Eve had grown to like Ozz for the good, reliable partner he was. She liked his nice, intelligent face, his broadchested athletic physique and the soft, strung-out way he had of speaking.
They spent the rest of that day going over the car with a fine-tooth comb. Alex was right, he was a wiz with vehicles. ‘There y’are, Andy, now you’re a fully-paid-up bodger. Only thing you won’t be able to fix is an empty gasoline tank if you forget to keep a spare can. So, can of gasoline, bottle of water. Tomorrow we see how she goes.’
‘She says we should take a day’s leave.’
He nodded. ‘She’s a wise lady is our Alex.’
She said, ‘Lippizaner! Natural enemy of the people,’ without rancour. Just before they went in search of a place to sleep, he said, ‘I have t’ tell you, Andy, the little kid…’
He didn’t need to say. She had known all along that a child with that severity of burns couldn’t live long.
‘His name was Luis.’
‘I had thought he was a little girl.’
He shook his head. ‘When you were in the shower, I saw Dolores – by the way, she’s gone, got another lift – she knew all of them. Can you imagine!’
No, she could not. Who could imagine? It didn’t make it better that Dolores was a nurse; they were her own villagers, and it was possible even that the bombers were of her own nationality. She wanted to tell Ozz the coincidence of the name Luis, but that would mean admitting to her past, when her own name had been Louise.
That night spent at the hospital was unnerving. After washing in a kind of horse-trough, Eve again felt the same overwhelming need for sleep that she had experienced on most other nights since she had been here, what with the heat of the day and the tension of the job. She had expected, as the Villa Luna was run by the English, that the nurses with whom she shared a damp and crumbling room would also have been English, but they were Spanish. With smiles they offered naranja, not orange-coloured fruits but small, greenish ones which turned out to be the most sweetly delicious oranges Eve had ever tasted. The pungent scent filled the room, overwhelming the musty smell of several centuries of decay.
She fell asleep, but only on the edge of a restful sleep, jumping awake from time to time with the tail-end of a disturbing dream dissolving as she opened her eyes to the small steady flame of a primitive little oil-lamp. That evening she had asked a few people if they recognized Ken’s name, but no one had.
Restless, she tossed and turned, then lay awake allowing her mind to drift. It had been stressful at first being Eve Anders, but by now she had no trouble in answering casual questions about herself, never being specific, stepping aside. The little lamp flickered and its flame expired. The room was very dark, but she sensed someone coming in quietly. Then she heard soft breathing close to her ear, as though someone was bending over her. She was not surprised, she had been thinking of Ozz and it was almost as though she had been expecting him to come. The mattress was very narrow, but she moved over to make room, and as she turned she detected an evocative and distinctive scent – the shaving cream David used.
David? It couldn’t be, yet there was no mistake, it was David who was easing himself on to the narrow mattress. ‘David?’ she said quietly. ‘Shh,’ he said, and stopped her next question by closing his mouth over hers. David? His lips were soft, warm and moist as she remembered. Joy and pleasure flowed through her body. She was glad that he had found her. Now she could have it all, freedom and love. Her lips parted to his firm and mobile tongue which tentatively touched the tip of hers, and she heard herself give a quiet moan of pleasure. ‘Shh, Louise,’ he said, speaking close to her ear.
‘How on earth…?’ she whispered. ‘I wanted…’
‘Shh,’ he said again, kissing her and making her nipples rise as his cool hands discovered bare skin under her shirt.
His clothes smelled of cars and cigarettes, his face and hair of the astringent sweetness she associated with him. She turned to face him. Moonlight coming in at the small, bare window allowed her to see his handsome face and tousled hair. She thought: I don’t care if the others wake up. They don’t know me and I don’t know them. I’m a stranger in this strange land, making love in what was once a monastery. The idea of such a daring rendezvous was thrilling.
Even as she thought of what she wanted him to do next, his hand slipped down over her body and gently parted her thighs. He knew exactly what she wanted him to do, and anticipated her. This time he wouldn’t stop as he had before; now she was older, experienced, liberated and free. This time David would be as confident as Duke had been. No restraints, no repressions, no being honourable.
She wanted to be on her back, to feel the weight of his body; she wanted to be facing him, wrapped in his arms and legs; she wanted him behind her, pulling her into the hollow of his body; she wanted to be standing against a tree as she had been when she and Duke had taken one another, desperate to relieve their hunger.
She held him, guided him, felt him slip into her as firmly as Duke had done, and imagined that she could feel the rough bark of the tree pressed hard against her back. Now she could scarcely move or breathe for the intensity of the pleasure. Over her, under her, above and below her, inside her body and on her skin. She was tantalized by a compulsion to extend this voluptuous liberation, and by the desire to give in to it. Soon she had no choice. The tidal wave of sensual pleasure crashed. Sensation flowed upwards. Breathtaking. Extreme. She was aware only of lust being tremendously transformed into ecstasy. She gave herself up to the great thump and pulse that surged through her body.
Fulfilment at last almost drowned her, making her gasp for breath. For the time it lasted, she had forgotten the lover who had detonated the explosion until, in the darkness, he spoke softly. He spoke not in the cultured upper-class accent of David, but in Duke Barney’s plain country speech. He said, ‘It don’t signify nothing,’ as he had said when they went their separate ways and he had thrust into her hand a gemstone still embedded in rock.
Suddenly, of its own accord, the flame of the little oil-lamp jumped back to life, startling her and causing her to sit bolt upright with her heart thumping.
The room smelled of orange peel and sleeping women.
She was trembling and breathless, her body slick with moisture still pulsed spasmodically. Clutching her shirt around her, she grabbed her things and rushed out along the empty stone corridor to the small ablutions room with its cold water in a stone trough. There she stood over a drain and tricked cold water over her sticky skin.
It was as well she had no mirror, for she would have been ashamed to look into her own eyes. She might have left her old life, but she had not been able to leave behind the effect of years spent in a church-ridden school. Her conscious self had no regrets at the way she and Duke had given in to their mutual lust, but this unnatural experience must have come from some unwholesome part of her mind, and she was afraid of it.
By the time she had combed back her wet hair, put on a clean shirt and swilled the other through with cold water, her more familiar self had returned sufficiently for her to go and look for something to drink.
Although it was not yet light, from the sounds that echoed strangely along the stone corridors other people were up. She made her way through the passages until at last she found the kitchens. A woman, probably in her late thirties, with short greying curly hair and a trim figure, was watching a pan of milk and a kettle at the point of boiling. Eve’s instinct was to slip away, but the woman had seen her and waved. ‘Hi, nice to see another early-bird.’
‘Is this the hospital kitchen?’
‘No, those are way over the other side. Coffee?’
‘Thanks.’
She grinned, showing good American teeth. ‘Have yourself a seat.’ She held out a hand, ‘Sweet Moffat, been called Sweet since I was in first grade and said my name was Adeline.’
‘Eve Anders. No need to ask where you come from.’
‘You do too. I was born in Brighton, Sussex, England. Raised in the States and been married to the same American for ten years.’
‘I’d love to see America. I’ve been a film fan since I was a little kid. I feel I know the Bronx, Staten Island, Monument Valley, even Tombstone Gulch.’
‘It isn’t all Hollywood, but it’s a grr-eat country. Are y’always this early?’
‘Not usually before dawn. I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Haven’t seen you before, are you a nurse?’
‘No, a truck-driver.’ How legitimate that sounded, as though she had been a truck-driver all her life.
Adeline Moffat raised her eyebrows and made a one-thumb salute. ‘Glad to hear it. I’m all for women doin’ the thing they want ’stead of the thing they should. I’ve seen women truck-drivers, mostly they’re pretty good too. Pity it takes wars to get us out of our kitchens.’
‘Are you a nurse?’
‘No, no, I work with the children, orphans and refugees.’
‘Is your husband in Spain?’
‘Oh, yeah, Will’s here.’
‘In the International Brigade?’
‘No, Will is dead. Will and I are Quakers, pacifists, you know?’
‘Yes, I do know. One of my best friends back home is a Friend, isn’t that what you say?’ ‘Back home’ slipped out unawares.
‘Will and I came out here to set up a small aid station. We were on our way to Guernica but got caught up in the hills when the place was destroyed. Will died… heart attack. It’s OK, I’m through it now. I continued with what Will and I intended, so I’m with the Society of Friends Spanish Relief Committee doing what we can for the children. You got family?’
‘Two brothers, one is out here, with the IBs in the British Battalion.’
‘How long has he been out here?’
‘He left home a couple of years ago. He was going to walk and work his way across Europe, but I think he fell in love with Spain. It’s ages since I saw him, or heard from him. I don’t even know if he’s all right.’ Her voice broke and, although she pressed her hands to her eyes, she could not stop the tears that began to course down her face.
‘Oh, honey, honey.’
The soft womanly embrace, full of concern and understanding, did for Eve. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not really the weepy sort.’
‘It’s OK to cry, honey, it’s something human beings do. Sure you miss your brother, brothers are pretty special. D’you want to talk about it?’
‘No, it’s all right. Probably driving too long without a real break. It just caught me unawares.’
‘Hey, let me freshen up that tea. Like a dash of milk? It’s goat’s milk, really good for you. Maybe you just needed to cry. It’s nature’s way. I’m a great one for home-spun remedies.’
Oh yes, Eve Anders did indeed need to cry. About the child, and about the woman and about Florentin who had done his Charlie Chaplin act, and the school-children, the idlers, the boy with the mule, and the soldiers who had guarded their little convoy. She needed to cry for herself, and for Ozz who had found that dreadful memento. But she was afraid to cry; afraid that if she did so then she might never stop. She turned her mind to her surroundings.
All kitchens have a unique smell, but this one was reminiscent of the farmhouse kitchen in which Eve had spent her happiest days. That too had old stone walls, a flagstone floor and a cooking range. It too had its efficient but easy-going woman, the aunt who, when life had threatened to run out, had wound Eve up and set her going again. The scent conjured up a memory of Ken coming in carrying a shot-gun and a dangling pheasant, glowing and full of himself. He’d probably be carrying a gun now.
She helped Sweet Moffat for a while, then when the sky lightened she took her drink and sat curled up in the front of the Mercedes, and indulged herself a little by imagining how they were getting on at home. Thinking of her elder brother, Ray, was even more affecting because she had been closer to him than to Ken.
Ray hadn’t really understood why she needed to get away, believing that she had been driven out by his unexpected relationship with Bar. People said two women in a house never worked, but it had, and for months she and Bar had shared a happy life with Ray. She and Bar had loved each other for a long time before Ray gave in and let himself fall for her. As girls, they had loved one another deeply, with the kind of perfect passion that only girls burgeoning into womanhood can ever know: mystical, romantic, physical, total. Without being overtly sexual, they had established their maturing sexuality, tested their enticing sensuality. It had been in that tender encounter with Bar, who had been the conjuror of spiritual experience with herself as the acolyte, that they had become for a while two halves of the same spirit. ‘We are the one soul,’ Bar had said. ‘You the fair and I the dark. You the summer and I the winter,’ except in her rites Bar, in her fey and wise role, was inclined to say ‘Thou ist’ and ‘I be’.
There had been a Christmas when Duke Barney had stalked into the kitchen as he stalked into her thoughts now. Dark and proud, he had been so damned sure of himself, so damned sure that she desired him, which she did. In self-assurance she was his equal. She knew that she had a good brain and how to use it. She could do anything she wanted, be anyone she wanted to be. Duke Barney would never be the man for her, but he was the only person who knew who and what she was.
Ozz appeared with a bucket of water and some rags, and insisted that they do right by such a well-bred motor. ‘Ain’t she a beaut?’
They agreed to take Helan Alexander at her word and take a day’s leave for Eve to give the motor a good run. She settled into the pleasure of being at the wheel of such a powerful car which was wonderfully easy to control. When Ozz encouraged her to increase her speed on a good main road, they seemed to be gliding along. Ozz, with a map on the dashboard, directed their route. Sharp corners, good roads, hair-pin bends, winding tracks where goats strayed, Eve took every change of road as though she and the car had been together for a long time. She loved it guiltily.
As the morning drew on, yesterday’s experiences and the last vestiges of her disturbing night withdrew, closing the doors after them.
‘Y’ look born to the good life, Andy.’
‘I know.’
He took out two new, uncrushed, American cigarettes, lit one and put it between her lips.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Don’t light yours, we can share this one.’
He took the proffered cigarette and drew on it. ‘Spoken like a good mate.’
That was how she felt when she was with him, not that she had any great wish that they should be anything other than good mates, but she was used to men eyeing her. She was puzzled by him. Her good mates had always been girls of her own age. Men? Well, they were the opposite sex, prospectors, predators, yet Ozz had so far treated her in almost a brotherly way. What would she do if he did make a pass? He was desirable, that was for sure. She heaved a sigh at her own perverseness.
‘What’s that for?’
‘Take no notice, that’s just me, sorting myself out. I’m leaving the route to you. Where are we headed?’
‘Keep going till I tell you to stop.’
He handed her back the cigarette. ‘Pull off the road just up here.’
She did so, and turned off the engine. Hitching one knee up on to the seat, and resting his arm along the plump leather back, he turned to face her. She clutched the steering wheel and kept facing front, even though she felt the first stirrings of interest. It would be the most natural thing, two young people who liked one another engaging in a mild flirtation.
‘Listen, Andy, don’t go off the deep end, and tell me to mind my own bloody business if you like, but it won’t make any difference, I have t’ say it.’ He held up his forefinger. ‘One. The driver is always in charge of the vehicle. Two. The driver must always know the destination. Three. The driver always checks the proposed route before setting out. Four. Spare tyre, can of gasoline, can of water – the driver is responsible.’
‘I thought you put the cans in the boot.’
‘How can you be sure that I did?’
She flung open the door, went to the boot and flung that open too. He came round, leaned against the car and smiled.
‘OK. So you did see to it. OK, I didn’t check. OK?’ Back in the car she added, ‘I won’t forget again.’
‘Good.’ He took the cigarette, drew upon it and handed it back. ‘There’s another, but I don’t want to get you mad.’
‘Why should I get mad?’
‘You don’t take criticism easily because you don’t like to believe that you’re not perfect. It makes you feel guilty not to be perfect. Am I right, or am I right?’
‘That’s ridiculous. I’ve always been able to accept criticism.’ He was the most irritating man. ‘OK, let’s get the wigging all over at once.’
‘Five. If the driver’s a lovely young female and she’s wearing a skirt that’s too tight for driving, she should be sure that she can control the car if her passenger can’t control his urge to find out how far up her legs go.’ He took back the cigarette, but didn’t look at her.
She sat very still, staring through the spotted windscreen. Her immediate impulse had been to pull her skirt down. I’m damned if I will!
He sucked on the last of the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke out of the window, then flicked away the stub. ‘You said you wouldn’t get mad.’
‘I’m not mad.’ She turned on the engine, but made no attempt to put it into gear. ‘Let me see the map. Please.’
‘You are mad.’
‘I’m not! And if you don’t hurry you’re going to waste that half-inch stub of cigarette smouldering over there.’ Such a childish remark. He turned casually to look at the thin trail of smoke. ‘What the hell, let it burn. I’m in an expansive mood.’
He was needling her. She was determined not to respond, so she looked fiercely at the map. She switched off the engine and realized that the map was upside down. She traced the routes of their recent convoy journeys with her forefinger. He was right, she was mad at herself. She became as aware of her exposed knees as if they had been her naked thighs.
Ozz sat, half turned in her direction, seemingly quite at ease as she pored over the map. ‘Six,’ she said at last. ‘Do you want to know number six, Mr Lavender?’
‘Sure, Andy,’ he said amiably. ‘If it’ll teach me anything, sure I want to know.’
‘OK! Six. Drivers who are given a bit of sensible advice never allow themselves to get mad – it makes them feel so damned foolish.’
‘’Fraid that’s not a new one, Andy.’ Opening the door, he said, ‘I’ll just get it before it burns right down. Shame to waste good tobacco.’
Opening the door on her side, she said, ‘Come on, now that we’ve got that settled I’m going to stretch my legs for five minutes.’ She had pulled off the road into the lee of some craggy rocks which shielded the view. When she walked round to the other side of the car, she was amazed to discover that beyond the rocks the land dropped away into a valley so beautiful that it might have been a fantasy. More than just beautiful, it was exhilarating, enchanting, and at the same time humbling and alien. Here was a landscape in which she knew she was a foreigner, the stranger in a strange land. Where had that phrase come from? Well, it suited her mood just now. Alienation invoked in her a sense of risk, of uncertainty. Tomorrow could bring anything at all. In the weeks and months ahead, she would become used to this exotic countryside, but not too soon, for she wanted to continue falling in love with this place.
She became aware of Ozz standing beside her, and he too was gazing reflectively over the red-earth valley striated with even rows of bright green narrowing into the far distance and ending in craggy outcrops, similar to the one where they found themselves. ‘Makes me feel pretty homesick,’ he said.
‘Those are grapes, aren’t they?’
‘Sure. We got vineyards back home. Our place has good acidic soil, right amount of rainfall, hill-slopes open to the sun, what else but grapes could you grow on land like that?’
‘I don’t know. I assumed you were a truck-driver.’
He hunkered down close to the rough, dry ground, crumbling a handful of earth which trickled through his fingers. She sat beside him, covering her knees without making a point of it. ‘I am, weekends, evenings and holidays,’ he said. ‘It’s all I’m really fit for on my dad’s spread. The big boys won’t let me near the vines. I don’t mind, I’d rather have grapes poured cool straight from a cool bottle. Chateau Lavender. It’s true. My old man makes real good wine. Good as French, but it’s fragile. Don’t travel too well. You Brits turn up your noses at it, and I can’t blame you. Aussie wine should be drunk close as possible to where it grows.’ He leaned back on his hands and stared up at the dear blue sky. After a few minutes of restful silence he said, ‘In the real world, I’m a school-teacher.’
It was the last thing Eve would have guessed from his sunburned skin, his unruly hair, his powerful physique. Her ear picked up the change in his vowel-sounds as he talked about his home. He dropped the stagey good cobber.
‘Lavenders is a family wine business. You’d know Lavenders if you came from Down Under. Good stuff, not like this battery acid they drink in Spain. Dad and my brothers tend the vineyards.’ He pointed to the green rows. ‘I can tell you just what you’d find if you went down there. Thousands and thousands of sprays of little flowers, some still blooming, some showing the first titchy little grapes. You come back in a couple of weeks and they’ll be neat little green grapes big as… big as your fingernail. Seven Lavender brothers. Mam reckoned she always wanted to see one son in a white-collar job, so being the youngest I guess I was it.’ He wagged his head and smiled a lop-sided smile. ‘Just as well she didn’t want a son in a dog-collar job, I’d have made one hell of a Father Lavender.’
‘Did she mind you coming to Spain?’
‘Mam? She was the first one to come up with the idea.’ He smiled as he mimicked the Welsh tongue, ‘Mam’s a Thomas, you see.’ He changed his tone. ‘From Welsh Wales. Her da was a miner, but what is the use being in the coal if it’s killing you and it is just a bit of sun on your back you need? So Granda took Nana and my mam and her brothers and sisters, and set off for New South Wales on a loan from some old auntie. My little mam still has the Welsh in her – clings to it like grim death. Granda didn’t know anything about growing grapes, so he moved on to where there were people who did, and set up shop on his own until he met another Welshman – Bryn Lavender – with two sons and a variety of grape that was made by the Good Lord to blend with the one Granda grew. Ah, to hear the story properly, you should hear little mam tell it.’
‘You love your mother a lot, don’t you?’
‘I guess I do, but your mam’s always just your mam and you don’t ask yourself that kind of question.’
‘Do you take after her?’
‘In looks? I suppose I do.’ He grinned fondly. ‘She’s older, littler and a bunch of pregnancies hasn’t done a lot for her shape. I don’t know, like with the love bit, it isn’t easy to look at your mam objectively. She’s my little old Welsh mam, and she’s got a sense of what’s right and what ain’t more than anybody I ever knew. You two’d get on like a house afire.’ He looked at his wrist-watch. ‘I was thinking we might drive as far as the coast. What do you think?’
She smiled. ‘I’ll just check the map.’
‘It’s not that far to Jávea, I wouldn’t mind having a look now we’re this close.’
‘I’ll go along with that. Do you know this part of the coast?’
He shook his head. ‘In the classroom back home, there was a picture of a bay on a calendar that I inherited along with the ten-year-old kids. I’d give a lot to see the real thing. I’d like to write to the kids, tell them I was there. I expect the picture’s still on the wall, they could mark it with a cross.’
‘As good an excuse as any to cruise around like tourists.’
‘To hell with your conscience. The war will still be there tomorrow and didn’t Alex say that we were to give the Beaut a good test, and have a day off?’
They made for Chinchilla de Monte Aragón, halting briefly to take photos of its massive, sandy-brown castle which seemed to have thrust its towers and fortified walls out of a sandy-brown bed. The town itself was old and set on an isolated ridge overlooking the plains. Its streets radiated out from an old church and were so steep and narrow that at times Eve’s heart was in her mouth, but that did not lessen her delight and curiosity.
Some miles further on, Ozz announced, ‘Almansa,’ and got his camera ready for anything that would please his mam. Here they stopped for a drink and some gasoline. This town too had its dominating castle, on a conical outcrop, looking as picturesque and dramatic as anything dreamed up for a Hollywood film. The church was gothic and imposing, and there was an ancient convent.
The day was now hot as hot, and the sky blue as blue. On the last few kilometres of the journey, the landscape oscillated, the red-and-black paintwork of the Mercedes shimmered, and those roads which were metal-surfaced seemed to be detached from the vehicles driving on them, giving cars and carts the appearance of floating a foot above the ground.
Tracing the map with his finger, Ozz gave Eve a series of directions, none of which brought him to the point from which his classroom picture had been taken. ‘OK, I give up. Go south and it looks as though we ought to come to some small coves. If it’s not too public, we might take a dip.’
They reached a point where it appeared they might get access to the sea. Eve manoeuvred the wide car along a road that dropped steeply down, becoming narrower as it went. Suddenly, they were confronted by a breathtaking view over the deep blue bay of Jávea, an expanse of still water enclosed within hills that sloped down to pale buff-coloured headlands and beach.
Ozz pushed forward in his seat. ‘Hey! That’s my picture. Would you believe it? It actually exists.’ The sun was almost overhead, and as they got out the heat slammed into them.
‘Smell the sea, Ozz?’
Ozz nods.
‘My father was a sailor, we lived by the sea.’
Ozz peers at her, she seldom lets on about herself. Curious as he is about her, he knows better than to show it. Opening the boot he takes out a large green golfing umbrella. ‘Bet you never reckoned there’d be a use for this. It’s the real McCoy.’
‘I’m surprised nobody’s pilfered it.’
‘C’mon, dig out a couple of bottles and let’s go see what the beach is like.’
A spontaneous picnic. The feeling of elation as she unearths the red wine and fizzy lemonade and packs into her haversack some of the tomatoes she bought along the road, is straight out of her childhood: taking strawberries and honey-water in a bottle to sit with feet dangling in cool water.
There is a wonderful purple shade beneath the slender dark-green pines. Holding hands they scramble and slide down the deep litter of needles, fooling about and laughing as they stumble into one another until, hands still tightly clasped, they leap over a small outcrop of rocks and fetch up on a stretch of pale golden beach that in the brilliant sunlight appears dazzlingly white. He squeezes her hand and, letting out a low whistle, says slowly, ‘Hey, hey. Will y’ just look at that, sweetheart.’
The bay that they had seen from above is a crescent of rocky foreshore bordering a fiat beach of fine, powdery sand. Behind the rocks the pine wood slopes steeply, dark against the deep blue sky. There is no sign of life, only birdsong.
‘Listen, Andy.’ They hold their breath, listening to the ribbon of song. ‘D’you know what that sounds like?’
‘Yes, but it can’t be, can it? Not here.’
‘Can’t be what? Listen. Go on, say what you think.’
She laughs. ‘It can’t be, it’s ridiculous, but I think – a nightingale?’
‘Yeah. I think a nightingale too. Can y’ believe it?’
‘Honestly!’ Then she giggles like a happy schoolgirl. ‘This is not real, you know, it’s a Hollywood film set, and that’s sound-effects.’
‘OK. Scene one, take one!’ He hurls one of his boots in the direction of the sea. The rest of their footwear follows in a kind of contest. Then he opens the huge umbrella, shoulders her haversack and with arms around one another’s waists, they brave the hot dry sand in hops and leaps as far as the damp strand. There, Ozz angles the umbrella against the sun, and they sink gratefully on to the firm sand. They share one of the bottles of sweet lemonade that spurts over them as Eve opens it.
‘Nectar of the gods. I’m goin’ to peel off and cool down if it’s OK with you? I’m decent. Athletic strip,’ he explains as he reveals that he is wearing vest and running shorts. ‘I went for an early run.’ He removes the vest. In spite of the dream fantasy that had shaken her in the early hours, Eve finds herself responding to Ozz’s marvellously athletic body and long bare legs, muscles shaped by the training specific to a hurdler and long, narrow, white, cared-for feet.
He grins happily. ‘T’ be honest, I wondered if we might just find a bit of quiet beach.’
She punches his arm playfully. ‘I reckon you knew about this place all along.’ His legs are beautiful. She never saw David’s legs bare. He too had long legs, were they as firm? Was David’s behind as tightly moulded as Ozz’s? Were the hairs on David’s limbs thick and golden? Did his chest have that silky sheen? She withdraws her eyes from Ozz’s splendid body as he joins her in the umbrella’s shade. She smiles to herself, recalling what her old teacher had said about lust being as dangerous as the first Mrs Rochester. Is it so terrible to have erotic thoughts? Why shouldn’t she feel like this about Ozz, or any man? It was only nature at work.
She sits up and drinks some more of the warm, sweet lemonade, which satisfies her thirst. But the greater need won’t be so simply satisfied. What would happen if she and Ozz did it together? So far theirs has been a platonic friendship, uncomplicated by sex. How easy it would be to demolish this quite extraordinary relationship. What is it that makes it so special? It wasn’t as if they had known one another for very long. It was special for him too, she was sure of that. If he made an attempt to make love to her, and if she let it happen, they might still have a relationship worth having, but it would not be the same thing that they had now. Was it worth the risk? She doubts that she would stop him.
Ozz says, ‘I shall try to promote the idea of siesta when I get back home. Great idea. I’m going to take a dip. Coming?’
‘I was just thinking.’
‘You’d be more comfortable if you’d unbutton or peel something off. There’s nobody here but us chickens.’
She would like that. She remembers herself and Bar Barney as young girls, marvellously naked, dangling their feet in the chickweed-covered water, their bare hot skin catching the slightest movement of cool air. But to be naked so close to such a desirable man would be more complicated.
‘I burn easily.’
He raises his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Hey, you’re not shy. And I know you’re not a prude.’
‘Of course I’m not shy.’
‘That’s OK then.’
‘Really, I’m not. I’m cooling off nicely.’
‘I shouldn’t try to nuzzle you or anything like that.’
‘Of course. I know that.’
‘That’s OK then.’
Sitting up and looking out at the blue water is relaxing, helps her resist more speculation about what would happen if he touched her breast or her Venus’ mound. The sea is inviting.
‘Andy?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m…’
‘What?’
He looks at her, smiles and pauses. ‘Ah, noth’n’, noth’n’ at all that won’t keep. Except that, it seems a bit of a waste if you’re going to keep your knickers on and your tits covered when we could have a nice bit of a dip. I’m not the enemy, sweetheart, and I don’t reckon you and me need to make a big thing about this John Thomas and pussy stuff.’ He laughs. ‘I could’a put that a lot bloody better.’
At that moment, all that she needs to do to change the nature of their relationship is to put out a hand and say something about Lady Jane, make an allusion to Lawrence perhaps. He was allowing her to make the decision.
‘Them knicks ain’t going to make much difference, but keep’m on if you feel better. But I don’t intend keeping my bum covered when I swim.’
‘Ozz Lavender!’ It takes her only seconds to bare her body. The ultimate freedom. It is wonderful.
Ozz looks at her appreciatively, she thinks, objectively. ‘That is one hell of a body, Andy.’
He slips easily out of his running shorts, then stands up, holding out his hand to help her to her feet. ‘C’mon, let’s play the scene for the big production – Adam and Eve in Eden before the Fall.’
For a brief second she doesn’t move but looks directly at his flat belly, narrow hips and then to his hairy groin where his penis hangs its head. He is as masculine as could be and isn’t lusting for her.
The first Mrs Rochester stops rattling her bars. Eve takes his proffered hand and stands up. They run into the sea like children, splashing and kicking up the water.
The sea is soothing and wonderfully relaxing. As she might have guessed, Ozz swims gracefully, with an athlete’s powerful over-arm action, his face turning sideways in the water only every six or eight strokes, always the same side, flicking his mouth clear of the water to take in air. The sea at home had not often been warm, so that much of her swimming had been in the woodland pool, thirteen strokes in one direction and twenty in the other, in fresh, green and glassy water shared on good terms with the abundant pond life.
Here the sea is warm as bathwater, and she plunges herself like a spear towards the sandy bottom which is further than it appears from the surface. As she touches the floor of the bay, Ozz, in a stream of bubbles, touches her hand and points to a shoal of tiny fishes. She shows him a creature that has burrowed in the sand but kept a single open eye on watch.
They surface together. She has never seen him look so happy. Like recognizing like, she has suspected that his cheerfulness is a bit of a put-up job, and now she sees that it is. This is the real Ozz. She likes him more than ever. ‘If I take the chauffeuring job, do you think I get to keep the golfing umbrella?’
‘Make it a condition when you see Alex.’
‘I shall still keep pushing for my big truck or ambulance.’
‘I never doubted that.’
Treading water, he holds out his hands. She takes them and they float facing one another, the hot sun on their backs, the cool bright water beneath them, gently letting the little wings of waves move them about as they might have moved seaweed or jelly-fish.
Soothed and happy, she at last gets out and sits patting herself dry with her skirt while Ozz takes another leisurely swim along the line of the shore. When he too comes out of the water, his normally unruly hair slicked to his head, she sees that he has a partial erection which is gone by the time he reaches the shade of the umbrella.
‘Did y’ ever feel this good?’
‘Never.’
‘I’m not as fit as I should be, I should stop smoking.’
‘So stop.’
‘What the hell, I enjoy the hunt for the weed.’ He passes her the bottle of wine and then drinks from it himself. ‘Y’know what I reckon, sweetheart? One day, when it’s all over, we’ll come back, shall we?’
She hugs her knees and joins him in his fantasy. ‘You bring the umbrella and some of the famous Lavender wine. Choose a good year.’
‘Vintage 1930, my old man’s proud of that, didn’t want to let it go. He’s still got some put down.’
‘And I’ll bring a big basket of strawberries of my own picking. Red Gauntlets. I’ll select the ones that reached their peak overnight and gather them just as the dew has dried and the sun has had time to warm them, and a little bowl of sugar and some heavy cream which I shall have skimmed myself.’
He rolls in her direction, his long body moving so beautifully. It does not arouse her sexually, nor does their closeness appear to do anything to stimulate him. Join me in Eden, he had said. For long moments they look into one another’s eyes. ‘Eve, sweetheart, I wish I could give you anything in the world you ever wanted.’
There is something so poignant about the moment that she feels lost in it. It is as though they have found a kind of love that is so extraordinary that it is more profound than anything they might have had if they had given themselves up to sex. It would have been so easy, the temptation to put out a hand and caress him had been there until she had plunged to the sandy bottom of the bay. Putting her arms around his neck, she kisses him gently on the cheek. ‘I think you have, Ozz.’
He makes no attempt to hide the fact that his eyes are brimming with tears. He just continues to search her face as though it is important to fix every eyelash and pore in his memory.
They settled propped up, back to back, drinking warm fruity wine directly from the bottle. When the sun grew too hot for them they retreated to the pine wood and the car.
‘What’s with the strawberries, then?’
‘Some people whom I love own strawberry fields. It was Elysium and I was a child invited to stay. You can’t imagine.’
‘Do you think we could have my little Welsh mam visit our umbrella? She’d bring figs and pomegranates.’
Eve laughed. ‘Seedy fruit gets her in, I adore figs.’
He kissed her lightly on the cheek as she got into the driver’s seat. ‘Thanks for telling me about the strawberries, sweetheart.’
‘Dear Ozz, you’re a bright light in a naughty world.’
He gave her a brief smile before he turned to the matter of maps and routes. ‘You ever meet my old man – you tell him that.’