As the ‘red train’ pulled into Perpignan, to cheers and flowers and a loud French chorus of the Internationale, the ginger-haired boy next to Nat muttered something behind his hand.
‘What?’
‘I said, funny kind of secret,’ the boy repeated.
It was, Nat agreed. After all the lurking at Victoria, and the messing around with coded matchboxes at the Lyon’s Corner House. The black berets handed out in Paris. Not much of a disguise. More like markers of who they were and where they were going, Nat thought at the time. But he had played the game, kept quiet, admitted nothing. He couldn’t believe his luck really. The Communist Party had started recruiting officially within weeks of his decision to go and fight. It made everything so much easier.
Just as they lurched across the Spanish border, the same boy started shouting from the back of the bus. ‘I don’t want to go. I’ve changed my mind.’ His words came out in a kind of scream. ‘Let me off! Please! I’m not going.’
Lights flickered on and off and men looked around in panic and dismay. Nat started to his feet, thinking irrationally that he could reason with him. The man in the seat behind the lad stood too. His efficient right hook knocked the protestor out cold. Nat sat down in a hurry.
And suddenly there they were, in Spain.
Figueras stank. And you’d think nothing could beat the stench and squalor of an East End tenement. With the first breath of human excrement, Nat gagged. The vast medieval fortress had a courtyard the size of Trafalgar Square, and it was covered. Nerves, or the food?
Ravenous from days and nights of nothing but French bread and chocolate, Nat arrived ready to kill for a cuppa. Others had been talking of beer for hours. Instead they sat down to red wine and rice. At least it looked more or less like rice. But it was black, and came in a strange sauce with bits in which looked like white rubber bands. Fishy. Nat knew his mother would be horrified – it certainly wasn’t kosher.
Half a night’s sleep in the dungeons, and the next morning the new recruits had orders to assemble at the drawbridge for their march to the train station. The view across the valley took Nat’s breath away. The landscape was laid out like a painting, all golds and greens, umber, raw and burnt, and viridian. He wished he could get it on paper, and send that to Felix. Better than a letter. Though he wanted to be with her when she looked at it, to watch the expression in her eyes change. He wondered if she’d ever seen hills – mountains – like these. He certainly hadn’t.
‘¿Bonito?’ A Republican Army guard was speaking. He caught Nat’s eye, and nodded vigorously. ‘Beautiful, yes? You like our country, comrade? ¿Le gusta?’
‘Sí, sí.’ It was Nat’s first chance to try out his book-learned Spanish. He felt a bit of a fool – stuttering and awkward. He’d never been one for play-acting, and this was almost worse. But he was determined to give it a go. What next? He tried to summon up the right page of his textbook. Then a useful phrase floated into his head. ‘Moowee bonito, sí. Me gusta mucho.’
The guard went on nodding, encouraging him. Nat thought something stronger was needed. You’d think he was at some kind of lah-di-dah tea party the way he was carrying on.
‘¡Viva l’España!’ he said. This produced the broadest of grins.
‘¡Viva la Republica! ¡Viva la democracia!’
That was all right then.
All he really remembered after that was a blur of stations and slow trains, celebratory banquets and hard wooden-slatted benches. Cold nights and warm sunny days. There were other volunteers too, hundreds of them. They came from all over Europe, and filled carriage after carriage on the trains.
At Barcelona, a lively brass band greeted them on the station platform. ‘¡Alza la bandera revolucionaria!’ the crowds sang. ‘Raise the revolutionary flag!’ The city’s welcome caught at Nat’s heart and his soul soared. This was what he’d come for.
All the hatless workers in Catalonia must have abandoned their tasks to greet these strangers. Staring with sleeplessness, the volunteers tried to rise to the occasion. Their march was hardly military, but each step was more in time. Music helped. So did the warmth of the crowds. How could you ever guess from the newsreels how colourful it would be?
‘This all for us?’ Nat heard one man ask his neighbour out of the corner of his mouth, indicating the gaudy array of flags and banners.
‘You must be joking, comrade! Welcome to the revolution! Hadn’t you heard? Barcelona belongs to the workers now. They’re living the dream. Ain’t it something?’
‘And the red and black flags? What they all about then?’
‘Anarchists.’
Political posters were plastered over every wall. Strong lines, blocks of colour – cadmium red and cobalt blue – intensely clean and bright against the faded brown advertisements for soap powder and stockings. Effective, thought Nat. One showed a beautiful young woman in overalls, a rifle on her shoulder, eyes fixed on an unseen horizon. A miliciana. Nat realised he was walking along with an enormous grin slap across his face.
They passed a café where children stood on tables to see them. A high voice shouted out in heavily accented English: ‘Now we know we are not alone!’