The February election brought victory for the Popular Front, a coalition of the Left. Their supporters were out celebrating in the streets, cheering and talking of freedom and fair shares for all. Those who had supported the Monarchists and Falangists and other Right-wing parties were aghast and keeping to their shuttered houses.
‘Now we will have our own government,’ cried Pedro, punching his fist in the air. ‘This is for us. For the people!’ The cry was taken up.
‘They think they’ve got it all tied up,’ said his mother, Sofia, meeting Encarnita on her way up to the cemetery. Sofia spent much time up there amongst the dead. ‘Do they think the other lot will just sit back and take it? What fools they are! The landowners are never going to give up their estates without a fight. People are tight-fisted when it comes to land.’ A few peasants had taken over some parcels of ground in the campo but that had not gone very far.
‘She’s right, of course,’ agreed Rinaldo, when Encarnita repeated what Sofia had said. ‘The struggle is not yet finished. I always told you it would not be simple.’
To hear this depressed Encarnita. She had been hoping that she would not have to go on worrying about him when he went out to meetings. Sometimes she lay awake until the middle of the night listening for the sound of his step in the street outside.
‘Is nothing going to change?’ she asked.
‘We have to keep up the pressure,’ said her uncle.
Some things did change. Political prisoners were released and for a while there was no censorship and books and newspapers were printed unexpurgated. The power of the church appeared to be diminishing. For a start, education was to be taken out of the hands of the clergy and given over to the state. Moral standards began to shift. Freedom was in the air. Young courting couples from decent families walked the streets without chaperones and fishermen and labourers came with their girls to dance in the hotel and were served cheap beer by a smiling Manolo. But, said Rinaldo, all of that was not enough. The poor were still poor and their children were starving. They couldn’t go dancing. The political meetings went on, and the speeches. Discontent mounted. Shop windows were broken, priests spat at in the street. There were acts of sabotage, too, at the ice-making plant and the power station, both owned by a marquis no one had ever set eyes on. The tax collector, along with his wife and furniture, were thrown out of their house by a posse of elderly women, who then, amidst applause, proceeded to dump them in a cart and drive them out into the campo, depositing them beyond the confines of the town. Encarnita watched their eviction and was caught up in the wave of cheering but afterwards she wondered if it had been right to cheer. The taxman’s wife had looked terrified. Encarnita was left with an unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach.
‘None of this is good for business,’ grumbled the puffing and sighing Herr Christien. ‘When is it all going to settle down?’
‘Most people from abroad don’t know what’s going on until they get here,’ said Jacobo. ‘Most people don’t know anything much about Spain.’
Encarnita was with Jacobo and Lorenzo in the hotel when a boy put his head round the door and yelled that they were burning the holy images from the church on the beach. They dropped everything and went out. An excited crowd had already gathered around the fire, which crackled and spat and licked its booty. The men of the village were there, and their women and children. The children became enflamed themselves and began to chuck stones. Their mothers looked uneasy and Encarnita saw Sofia standing on the edge of the crowd crossing herself.
‘The Spanish are far too excitable,’ said Jacobo. ‘It would be for their own good if they would all calm down a bit. Even the girls are talking about politics!’
But the excitement carried on, taking the form of parades and strikes and, of course, speeches. The speeches stirred the blood. Fascist symbols were daubed on walls. The Republican flag was draped across the balcony of the Town Hall and, underneath, painted in red, were the words: ‘We swear to defend this bandera with the last drop of our blood.’
The strikes, when called, were solid. No citizen of Almuñecar would dare work. Rinaldo warned Encarnita not even to lift a hand. The staff at the Hotel Mediterráneo sat idling on the beach while Herr Christien struggled in the kitchen to feed his few guests, whose rooms lay uncleaned.
Every day, a line of peasants could be seen coming in from the campo, on foot and on donkeys, laden with any weaponry they might have, staves, rusty pistols, flintlocks, ready for battle, should battle be necessary.
‘Who are they going to fight?’ asked Jacobo.
‘Maybe the army,’ said Encarnita uneasily.
‘Whose army?’
Rinaldo was thinking, as each day passed, that conflict was inevitable. He was convinced the Right was planning a counter attack. There were regular reports of violence in the large cities, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia. Strikes and riots were a daily occurrence. In a village along the coast, a group of Falangists, proudly sporting armbands, entered a bar and coolly shot dead five fishermen. The son of a former mayor, a Falangist, was later found in the campo, shot through the head. Fear crept through the streets like a poisonous gas. Lorenzo was talking of going home. He had moved from the hotel into the house of a middle-aged Englishwoman, who had taken him under her wing. Wilma Gregory was literary, according to Lorenzo, and well connected. She had come recently to Almuñecar and had bought a house next to the church with the idea of settling here but was coming to realise that she had picked the wrong time.
News of an anti-government uprising in Morocco on the 17th of July reached Almuñecar. ‘The Moors have risen up, led by some general called Franco,’ reported Jacobo, who had heard it on the radio. The next day there were similar uprisings in Sevilla and other cities. No one knew exactly what was going on. Rumours flew about. Villagers gathered in the plaza, along with the peasants and their families who had come in from the fields. With them, they had brought their beasts. Sofia moaned about the mess in the pueblo. ‘It’s beginning to look like a farmyard. And smell like one.’ The police, at this point, were making themselves scarce, not knowing which side they were meant to be on, according to Rinaldo. He, along with Manolo and another man, Francisco, known as Frasco El Gato – The Cat – were organising a kind of home guard, a militia, for the protection of Almuñecar against the Fascists.
One group, led by Manolo, set up a roadblock on the coast and stopped the few vehicles that were abroad. They made a quick arrest: a car that two young men were travelling in was found to contain rifles and grenades. When a Frenchman arrived, flying a white flag, he was able to give them news of Málaga. He told them that the city was half in flames and people were fighting hand-to-hand in the street. Many were fleeing. He had been shot at as he left; the bullet holes in the bodywork of his car were proof of that. He was unable to say who had done the shooting.
Other members of the militia embarked on house-to-house searches and by the end of the first night they had stacked up a considerable pile of weapons in the plaza. They lit fires and sat around them, discussing tactics and keeping a watchful eye on their cache. They also made some further arrests. Young Falangist males, decked out in lacy shirts, heads held high, were rounded up and taken to the jail, as was the priest, protesting loudly.
‘What harm would he do?’ asked Sofia.
‘Uncle Rinaldo says he’s a symbol of the old regime,’ said Encarnita.
‘Why don’t they let him be, then, if the regime is done for?’
But it was not done for, they both knew that. They went home to their beds though they did not sleep well. They were wakened at intervals by shots. Cinderella whinnied unhappily in the back yard and tugged at her stake. Encarnita went out to quieten her and stayed for a while beside her looking over the great expanse of sea below, silver in the moonlight. The world seemed so peaceful. And then a new shot rang out and made her jump. She retreated indoors.
At first light, Rinaldo came home to change his clothes. He said they were going along the coast to help defend Motril against the Fascist rebels; they’d heard they were having trouble.
‘Be careful,’ said Encarnita.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
She pulled on her dress and ran down the hill to see him off. The men had commandeered a number of trucks and were piling aboard. They were in high spirits. Waving their caps and rifles in the air, they sang as they sped away, a song about the sons of the people being oppressed by chains. This injustice cannot go on…They left a deep silence behind them. Encarnita had noticed that El Gato, who was in charge, had had something strapped to his body. Dynamite, Jacobo told her, once they had gone. She shivered even though the sun was up.
She was on edge all day. After she’d finished her work at the hotel she wandered about the village, unable to settle. The men were not back by the time darkness fell. She sat on a wall down by the sea with Jacobo and Ana, one of the other housemaids, whose brother had gone on the trucks. They listened to the sound of the waves. Some people were out doing the paseo. Hearing a noise overhead Encarnita glanced up and saw a small plane circling. Aircraft were only occasionally to be seen in their skies. She shivered.
Suddenly, a bright, sweeping light, coming from the sea, almost blinded them and made them recoil. They put up their arms to shield their eyes. The light raked the shore from one end to the other.
‘It’s a searchlight!’ said Jacobo. ‘There must be a ship out there!’
Panic seized for a moment, then the people stilled and, not knowing what else to do, waited.
The light moved up to main road.
‘I can see a truck!’ cried Ana. ‘Look!’
She was right. The lorries were coming bumping along the coast road, sounding their horns, with the men on their feet, waving again. Their mission had not been successful, but they had survived their first encounter with the enemy. The crowd converged on them, clapping their backs, cheering, with Encarnita amongst them, relieved to see her uncle unhurt.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the light from the sea went out, as if someone had pulled a switch. A sigh of relief went up. But a moment later, the shelling began. The people on the shore panicked and for a moment did not know which way to turn. Then they headed for the shelter of the hills. Children stumbled and fell and were urged up and on by their fathers; mothers carried infants bobbing against their shoulders; older people hobbled.
Within minutes, it was all over. The noise stopped abruptly, though the smell of smoke hung in the air. They halted in their tracks, frozen like statues, half way between their homes and the hill, and listened, uncertain as to what to do. After a little while, when nothing else had happened, they began to creep back down into the village. Nobody had been killed, only frightened. It could have been worse. The next morning they heard that the attack had been a mistake; they had thought the trucks belonged to the rebels. So the attacker was really on their side, a friend, they were told. Apologies were conveyed to them.
Out of the confusion came a stronger determination for the pueblo to show its colours. The flag of the Republic fluttered from all the main buildings, the bank and the casino amongst them. People cobbled up makeshift flags and banners and draped their doors and windows. Peasants and fishermen took over the empty houses of the better-off, with great plans for turning them into sanatoriums and nursery schools, and even a training college for girls. In this new free society girls were to be given the chance of a proper education.
The militia set off once again along the coast in lorries, but they were more muted this time. They did not sing. Amongst them went old and young men, and a band of teenage girls armed with hand grenades, showing that women could be equal to men. Rinaldo had asked Encarnita if she wanted to join them.
‘I’m not sure,’ she had said hesitantly. At whom would she be expected to throw grenades?
‘The enemy! The enemy of the people. Surely you know that?’
‘But how would you know who is the enemy?’
‘It will be obvious.’ Rinaldo had been a little impatient.
‘I am on your side,’ she had said to him as he went out of the door. ‘I am for the Republican cause, you don’t have to doubt that.’
‘I know. You’re too young, anyway, to stain your hands with blood. Better to stay at home!’
She felt a little guilty now that she had not gone to give him her physical support, but what use would she have been? Faced with a human being, could she have thrown a grenade? She knew that Pilar would not have wanted her to go. After some agonising, Ana had gone with her brother.
In the late afternoon, they saw two warships steaming eastward down the coast in the direction of Motril. Encarnita went down to the beach and joined Jacobo. As the evening sky began to change colour the ships commenced shelling the shore to the east of them. They listened to the dull thud, the steady boom, boom of the shells, and felt dull themselves, incapable of feeling. Encarnita stayed down by the sea with Jacobo after the bombardment had ceased.
‘Don’t you want to go home?’ asked Encarnita. ‘To Germany?’
‘It wouldn’t be so good for me there, either. I’m a Jew, you see. Our leader, Herr Hitler, doesn’t like Jews.’
Encarnita had never heard of Herr Hitler.
‘You’re lucky. Better not to hear of him.’
There was to be no jubilant welcome for the homecoming men and women this time. When lorries returned they brought back dead and wounded along with the living. Pedro was dead, and Manolo was missing, as was Ana’s brother. Ana herself had received a stomach wound, but the greater harm had been done to her spirit. She subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown and would not leave the house. As for the rebel village, it had not been quelled; the Almuñecar militia had been ill-equipped to cope with the Nationalists’ defence, and the destroyers’ shells, which should have helped them, had missed and landed in the campo behind.
Rinaldo had a wound in his shoulder, caused by a passing bullet. It was bleeding profusely and the flesh was torn right down to the bone. ‘Superficial,’ he said. He could not complain about something so trivial. He’d seen one of his best friends lying in an alley with his throat cut. After Encarnita had bound up his shoulder he went out and sat in a bar with El Gato and some of the other men, sunk in a mood of deep depression, trying to decide what had gone wrong, apart from the fact that those bastards of warships had let them down.
Encarnita went up to the alcazaba and crouching in the shelter of a wall she let the tears flow. She wished she were back in Yegen, away from this madness. But perhaps they were fighting each other there too. She knew that some in the village would defend the monarchy and the church to the last while others would not and thought their power too great. But would that be enough for them to go out and kill each other, their friends and neighbours? She could not imagine it. She wished she could talk to Don Geraldo for he might have been able to help her understand why the world had turned crazy. He knew the world. He had travelled far and wide. But perhaps he and Doña Gamel would have left Spain by now and gone back to the peace and quiet of their own country.
Hearing footsteps Encarnita looked up to see Sofia coming purposefully up the slope with a cloth in her hand, making for the cemetery.
‘I have come to do my cleaning,’ she announced calmly.
‘Today?’
‘Why not today?’
Encarnita got up and followed her into the enclave. At least the dead were not warring.
Sofia picked up the crucifix. She held it aloft for a moment, regarding it with lips pursed, then, suddenly, she dashed it to the ground, crying, ‘What use are YOU? I asked YOU to look after him and YOU did not!’
Encarnita went to Pedro’s mother and put her arms round her. They cried together and when all their tears were spent Sofia said, ‘Now I shall have another grave to visit. If I can afford the funeral.’
‘I have some money.’
‘You need it.’
‘No, I want to give it you. For Pedro.’ Encarnita broke off, sniffing the air.
‘Something’s burning,’ said Sofia.
She stayed up in the cemetery while Encarnita ran down the hill. The casino was on fire, blazing brightly, beyond salvation. The crowd was cheering and some had run in and pulled out pieces of furniture. Two men dragged the grand piano into the street and turned it upside down, whereupon a group of children began to stone it. The casino might not have been an important building, except that it had attracted tourists, who had brought money into the town, but it saddened Encarnita to see the flames and the venom in the children’s faces. She turned away.
By the shore, she bumped into Manolo. He looked like a wet seal.
‘Manolo! You’re not dead, then!’
‘Not quite.’
‘Have you come out of the sea?’
He had escaped by swimming to the lighthouse, then he had made his way over the cliffs. ‘We are finished, Encarnita,’ he said limply. ‘They are too strong for us.’
‘But not in the whole of Spain?’
‘I don’t know! I just do not know.’
He went into the bar and Encarnita continued along to the hotel where Jacobo and Lorenzo were listening to Radio Sevilla.
‘It doesn’t sound good.’ Jacobo shook his head.
They huddled round the crackling radio and at midnight heard that General Queipo de Llano was about to make a statement.
‘He’s for Franco,’ said Jacobo.
De Llano sounded drunk, but triumphant. He had come on air to announce the fall of Sevilla. God’s army had triumphed! Praise be to God! Viva España! Viva la Virgen! Anyone who was not with them would be shot like dogs.
‘It sounds as if they’ve won,’ whispered Encarnita.
‘How can we tell?’ said Lorenzo. ‘He might just have captured the radio station.’ That was the trouble: news came through in fractured bursts. There was never a complete picture; Spain was a big country and there were many different factions operating.
‘I heard earlier that they were still fighting in the north,’ said Jacobo. ‘In Barcelona and Madrid. The workers won’t give up so easily there.’
‘Maybe they did not give up so easily in Sevilla!’ said Encarnita.
Next morning, another warship was standing off-shore. Friend or foe? Shortly afterwards, a small launch was seen setting out from the bigger ship. When it reached the beach an officer, in sparkling white and with gold on his cap, stepped ashore, announcing that he was from H.M.S. Blanche. His Majesty’s Navy – His Majesty being the King of Great Britain and Ireland – had sent them to pick up British subjects who had found themselves marooned in this difficult situation. They could come or not, it was their choice, but if it were him, he said, he would not hesitate. This might be their last chance to get out.
Lorenzo and his friend, the Englishwoman, Wilma Gregory, decided to go.
‘I don’t blame them,’ said Jacobo.
‘Nor I,’ said Encarnita sadly, who wished that they could also be carried away across the sea on HMS Blanche.
They helped Lorenzo gather up his few belongings and escorted the two travellers down to the beach. The woman was handed into the launch first, then it was the turn of Lorenzo. He would come back, he promised, then he embraced them and said good-bye. Encarnita and Jacobo watched the little boat cutting like an arrow through the blue sea, leaving a white wake behind, growing smaller and smaller as it neared the horizon. When it was a mere smudge they turned their backs. There would be no more musical evenings in the Hotel Mediterráneo.
Encarnita went up the hill and collected Cinderella. There was no sign of Rinaldo, who was probably at yet another meeting. ‘We’re going to get some fresh air,’ she told the goat. ‘We’re going to our house.’
As they neared the outskirts of the village they heard voices and the trundling sound made by cart wheels. Encarnita stopped dead, as did Cinderella. The road was swarming with people as well as animals and all manner of vehicles, moving eastward. Many were on foot carrying bundles. The old limped, some with feet bound in rags. Scattered about were pots and pans and pieces of furniture, dropped by those whose arms had grown weary. A mule lay on the side of the road its nostrils foaming horribly. Babies cried from the running sores on their limbs. An ambulance came weaving through and arms were stretched out in supplication but it was full already.
One family had pulled up on the verge while the father was trying to mend one of the wheels of their two-wheeled cart. He was cursing; a spoke had broken. The cart itself was piled teeteringly high with furniture, bedding and clothing.
Encarnita spoke to the mother, who looked as if she had not slept for many nights. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Who knows? As far away as we can get from Málaga. It’s like hell on earth there, what with the shootings and burnings. God knows what we’ve done in our lives to deserve this!’
‘You were living in Málaga?’
‘A village nearby. A village called Churriana.’
‘Churriana!’
‘You know it.’
‘No, but a friend – well, someone I used to know – went to live there. An Englishman. His name was Señor Brenan.’
‘Don Geraldo? Yes, we know him well. And his wife, Doña Gamel, too. They are friendly people. They always talk to us.’
‘And their servants, Maria, Rosario and Antonio?’
‘They’re well, as well anyone can be with all this going on! How is it you know them?’
‘I used to live in the same village.’
‘In Yegen, away up in the Alpujarra? Don Geraldo said they had been happy there.’
‘Have they stayed in Churriana?’
‘So far. But we think they’ll leave at some point. It’ll be easier for them to get away, of course. They can go to Gibraltar and get a ship to England. Their government will look after them. But who is to look after us?’
The father lifted his flushed face. ‘It’s not going to hold.’ He shrugged. ‘I need some strong twine.’
‘What use is a cart with a missing wheel?’ His wife was close to tears. ‘What are we to do with all our things? We can’t carry them.’
Encarnita offered to go and try to find some twine in the village. She knew a man who sold it.
‘But will the shop be open?’
‘He lives in the room at the back.’
‘Why should you do that for us?’
‘Because I should like to. Since you know Don Geraldo. He is the link between us.’
The man gave her some pesetas and one of the children, a boy of some nine or ten years, came with her. The rest of the family said they would look after Cinderella. Encarnita found Roberto, the shopkeeper, at home; and he did have some twine left, which he was willing to sell to her. She felt that this piece of luck was a good omen and it had cheered her even to have news of Don Geraldo, as well as Maria and Rosario. She ran back to the family who waited by the roadside.
‘Would you like to come with us?’ asked the woman. ‘Franco’s men will be coming this way, you can count on that.’
‘I live with my uncle,’ said Encarnita. ‘I couldn’t leave him.’
‘Of course you couldn’t. We must stay with our own in times like these. Vaya con Dios!’
They took leave of each other like people who had known each other for a long time. Encarnita watched yet another departure and wondered how far these people would have to flee to escape the rebel armies. They might be driven into the sea in the end.
She spent a couple of hours in the campo with Cinderella, who was reluctant to return to the hard, barren streets afterwards. When they reached the road she strained at her rope and dug in her hoofs. Life in Almuñecar did not suit her, nor Encarnita now, either. She wished they could live in their little house remote from war and talk of war.
She found Rinaldo at home. He was tying up a bedroll, and by the wall stood a packed knapsack.
‘Encarnita,’ he said, looking up at her, ‘I’m joining the Republican forces. They need recruits badly. I have to go and fight for our freedom. You understand that, don’t you?’
Encarnita nodded.