MORNING CAME, and nothing had happened after all. The Legion, they now said, was far away near Algeçiras. Everything was going to be all right. They would be kept there. The Moors, except the few that had crossed, would be kept in Africa. But there was a more sober look about things. There were more lorries on the road than ever, but they had a new determined air, as if they had something serious to do, somewhere important to go.
The kitchen was full of poor old countrywomen who had already begun to see Moors behind every bush and had come for protection and consolation. That day for the first time we flew our English flag. We had bought it at the Army and Navy Stores for just such occasions if they should eventuate. But we had not liked to put it up before because we had no Spanish flag to fly with it. But Pilar had hastily run one up out of odds and ends of old coloured dresses and we hung them both out on the balcony where they were received with enthusiasm by the passing lorries. And it was a great comfort to the servants and to all our poor neighbours, who said ‘Now the house is sacred. No one can touch it.’
‘Let’s go to Torremolinos to see Gray and find out what has happened,’ Gerald said.
Gray was an American friend, a journalist, who had taken a villa in Torremolinos, a village by the sea where there is a large English colony eked out with foreigners of other nationalities. Gray was trying to write a book on the confused subject of modern Spanish politics and so we felt that he ought to understand better than the rest of us what was really happening.
‘It’s dreadfully hot,’ I said. There were no buses running and the very thought of those long dusty miles under this burning sky made me tired and thirsty.
‘Never mind, some one will give us a drink and we can have a swim in the sea.’ Maria unwillingly made us up a merienda, a picnic lunch. ‘You’d much better stay at home in your own garden, and not go on the roads and get yourselves shot by these ill-educated youths,’ she said severely, with the scorn of the true conservative Spaniard, hating all forms of novedad, distrusting all change either to left or right.
‘Vaya usted con Dios,’ she said disapprovingly as we went out of the kitchen door into the street. ‘Salud!’ yelled a passing lorry load. ‘Salud!’ we yelled back with an excitement we could not repress. ‘Con Dios,’ said Maria so disapprovingly that it amounted to a curse, but her ‘with God’ was drowned in the hail of ‘Saluds’. And she went inside and shut the door with a bang.
We set off. Heavens, how hot it was! Not a breath from the sea, as we toiled down the seemingly endless way. Presently we left the tarred high road with relief and escaped the thundering lorries. As we climbed down the narrow yellow goat tracks our feet crunched the rosemary and thyme, and the sharp bitter-sweet scent rose in the hot air.
At last we could see Torremolinos, small and white on the edge of the sea. Exhausted by the heat we sat down in the shade of an olive tree and opened our lunch. It was a true Spanish merienda, cold potato omelette, a little goat’s milk cheese, half a loaf of bread, early muscatels and a small bottle of white wine. The blue sea was as quiet as it had been three days before. An air of everlasting peace, of classical peace rising from the deep past brooded over the Mediterranean. But suddenly far off inland we heard a rattle of shots, and to the left the ominous smoke of Malaga burning was still drifting out to sea.
A little wind was springing up, a tiny but fresh levante. It blew in our faces as we continued on our way; a long hot pull through the level plain among crops of beet sugar. Two patrols stopped us, but when they realised that we were English they only saluted and laughed. ‘These aren’t Fascists,’ they said grinning.
Torremolinos at last. Longing for coffee we stopped at the first café – locked and shut. ‘All the cafés are shut,’ said an onlooker. ‘Order of the governor. No place that sells liquor is allowed to serve anyone with anything.’
Thirsty and weary, we turned down a street towards the sea and knocked at Gray’s door. Our friend, who opened it, was a big dark American, ‘Thank heavens, you’re here. Do give us a drink, the cafés are shut. And tell us what has happened.’
‘Hell’s broken loose,’ he said pulling out a bottle of white wine and some glasses from the cupboard. ‘Maria,’ he shouted to his old fat cook, ‘Café para tres.’
‘Yes, but how did it begin?’
Generals in Morocco rose first. Everywhere in Spain they’ve tried to seize the Government buildings. Failed here completely, succeeded in Seville, and God knows where else. I don’t suppose they can do much really unless they can get all the Foreign Legion and the Moors over. And I don’t see how they can because the Government has got practically all the Navy. The officers rose, but the sailors refused to obey orders. Only one merchant ship brought over a boatload of Moors and Legionaries. Then the sailors seized the boat and took her off somewhere. The sailors on the warships have seized their officers and put them in chains or thrown them overboard, anyway they are all for the Government, or so people here say.’
Old Maria came in with the coffee just then.
‘Maria, como está usted en estos tiempos malos?’
‘Malísimos están! y a estos locos que van por las calles en coches con revólveres se deben de ponerlos todos en la carcel.’ ‘And these idiots who run about in motorcars with revolvers ought all to be in prison.’ Maria was as unsympathetic as our Maria over the popular excitement.
Gray laughed, his tolerant, kindly, western laugh.
‘She is a Fascist,’ he said to Maria’s indignation.
Fascist was already bandied about as a word of violent abuse. It had become the extreme of insult, even ousting sinverguenza from its place of honour.
Maria went out muttering about the evil of these times.
‘What are Maria’s politics?’
‘Complete disapproval of anything that was not done in her time in her hometown, Cártama – complete loyalty to Cártama – mild dislike of all the rest of Spain, distrust of all “foreigners”, that is to say all Spaniards not born in Cártama.’
‘How can she bear living away from it then?’
‘Well you know, she’s like the Boston Irish. She loves Cártama even more from a distance. But you’ll see that she’ll go back. She stays with me because I pay her well and she’s rather fond of me, and thinks these awful robbers of Torremolinos would fleece me if she weren’t here to protect me. Ask her about her twelve olive trees in Cártama some time. They’ve all got names and personalities. One is “the one with the broken bough”, another is “the one where they hung the fox”. I’m sure she prays for them and I expect they come when they are called.’
We all drank Maria of Cártama’s coffee. Delicious after the thirst and tiredness of that endless hot road.
‘I’m off this afternoon,’ Gray said.
‘Where to?’
‘To Morocco to see what’s happening, or to Madrid if I can get there by plane, or to Seville. There’s no use staying here. Malaga isn’t likely to be important. I want to see some of this fuss before it’s over. And you can’t send news out from here anyway. Everything’s censored.’
‘But how’ll you get away? There aren’t any trains or buses and surely you can’t pass the Rebel lines at La Linea, can you, even if you could get a car?’
‘I shan’t try. I’ve got a fishing-boat that’s promised to take me. Goes to Gibraltar smuggling every night anyway. My local friends will help me hop a lorry to Fuengirola. Then the fishing-boat and Gibraltar at dawn if we have luck.’
‘And a prison in Seville if you don’t, I suppose,’ said Gerald sardonically.
‘Or a nice roomy grave in the Mediterranean. I don’t believe the Rebels are up to catching us. But the worst of it is I’m a hell of a bad sailor. I shall be sick as a dog all night on that beastly fishy lugger. And I’ll look and smell so horrid that your conservative fellow countrymen will throw me back when they see what they’ve caught.’
‘Don’t you want to pack?’ Gerald asked.
‘Oh, I’m packed already, I wanted to go this morning but there was no way. Stay till my friends come – God knows when we’ll meet again. I shall go to America when I’ve had a look around. Spain’s going to be a hell of a place to write books in for the next year or so.’
‘I shouldn’t try, too exciting just watching it.’
Someone knocked upon the door, and two young men in blue overalls came in. And we all greeted one another Salud! Salud! Salud!
‘Hurry!’ they said. Gray seized his typewriter and suitcase. Goodbye! Goodbye! Salud! Salud!
Maria of Cártama stood in the doorway dolefully shaking her head.
Wearily we walked home. The sun was going down, but walking was still a penance. Our Maria greeted us crossly. She was glad to see us safe home, but she felt that something ought to have happened to us. The Spanish have a proverb which she quoted to us that night. ‘The foolhardy who get themselves killed are the Devil’s martyrs.’