Felix stood on the dusty road, rereading the writing on the front of the ambulance and wishing she didn’t have to get back into it quite so soon. She rolled the words round her tongue.
‘Medicamentos para los obreros de España.’
The letters were hand painted in white capitals, bold against dark green paintwork. They got bigger and bigger until they reached the huge final ‘A’ of España. Each time she saw them, her heart beat a little faster. This was what she’d undertaken. Medicine for the workers of Spain. She was sure Nat would approve.
It had taken nearly a week to get through France, and as long again to crawl down the coast of Spain. Only when they reached Valencia could they safely head west, towards Madrid.
‘Hop in!’ said Kitty, when everyone had emerged from behind their bushes. Brisk and kind, she was returning to Spain with the full weight of experience behind her, and everyone respected her for that. ‘If we press on, we should get there before dark. Look, I managed to get some oranges.’
Felix declined the fruit and concentrated on keeping the rest of her food down. Spanish roads were even worse than French ones. It wasn’t a question of Charlie having to remember to drive on the right – he swerved to wherever he could see the fewest potholes. Wondering exactly what or where ‘there’ might be was quite out of the question. Felix was just glad she’d find out soon.
The vehicle was stuffed with so many boxes of supplies they could barely move. A folding operating table, sterilising equipment, instruments, drugs, and boxes and boxes of dressings. And disinfectant of course. The nostril-tingling smell of Lysol made Felix feel strangely at home. Knee to knee with Kitty again, she felt she’d known her new friend for ever.
As soon as they were all settled, Kitty’s enquiring eyebrows appeared above the tortoiseshell frames of her spectacles and she asked, ‘So who’s ready for another Spanish lesson?’
John groaned. ‘Oh, have pity, Kitty,’ the doctor begged. ‘I just can’t take any more in.’
‘There’ll be no time for this kind of thing when we get to Tarancón. I know you think I’m a slave-driver – well, yes, I admit it. I am.’ Kitty’s energy was relentless. ‘But it’ll all make more sense soon, I promise. Once you’re hearing it around you all the time. Though I suppose it depends where we all end up in the long run . . .’
‘You’re right. Now, where’s my pen?’
Mr Smilie pronounced it ‘pin’, which made Felix smile. Their surgeon was from New Zealand. He was on a research trip to London when war broke out and he didn’t plan to return home until Fascism was defeated in Spain.
Mr Smilie lived up to his name. They told him, and he just replied, ‘Oh, call me Doug. We’re all comrades here.’
He liked to learn his Spanish in inspiring phrases. Kitty was happy to supply them.
‘¡Primero ganar la guerra! First win the war!’ That was one of his favourites.
All through Catalonia and Valencia, and now in the hills of New Castile, they were welcomed with warmth. Every village they stopped at offered them food. Food and enthusiasm. Felix began to expect the women and children who came out to greet them. The only men they ever saw were ancient – tiny men, bowed and bent. They were the men who couldn’t fight. At night, the medical team pulled over into a field or olive grove. They covered the ambulance with branches and leaves and slept on stretchers.
Felix’s new companions were terrifyingly well-informed. Rather like Nat. Half of them wore spectacles and they all talked about the international proletariat and solidarity and justice, and sang songs she’d never heard before. ‘Oh, I’m the man, the very fat man, who waters the workers’ beer,’ chorused Felix with the others, feeling more worldly with every verse. Then Kitty sang ‘The Peat-Bog Soldiers’, in German, while the rest of them beat time, and Charlie thumped the steering wheel.
‘They sing it in the camps, in Germany. You know about the camps?’ said Kitty.
‘Camps?’ Felix only knew about holiday camps.
‘Work camps. Concentration camps. “Politicals” – subversives, that is – they got chucked in as soon as Hitler came to power.’
The others all knew of course.
‘First it was communists and social democrats and trade unionists,’ said John.
‘Then it was gypsies and homosexuals,’ added Kitty.
‘Now they’re sending the Jews.’
A squadron of German fighter planes flew overhead and Felix’s last twinges of guilt about her mother and George were wiped out. Aviones, Kitty taught them. ‘Listen out for the church bells. That’s a warning. And they target ambulances, and hospitals, so don’t imagine for a moment that a red cross will save you.’
After they had taken cover, Felix wrote her first letter home. It had been forming in her head for days. The long drive left so much time to mull over things.
Now that I’m here I know. You see Spain in the newsreels, and it feels so far away, nothing to do with England. But that’s not true. It couldn’t be closer. Now I know this is a war that matters for everyone, all over the world.
Everything seemed so clear.
We’re all involved. We can’t let the Blackshirts win in England, and we can’t let the Nationalists force their way into power here either. It’s a fight for the only things really worth fighting for – everything I always used to take for granted, I suppose . . . like freedom, and elections, and being able to say what you think. I can’t just close my eyes and pretend it’s not happening. Fighting here is the only thing we can do right now to stop Fascist bombers flying over Lawrie Park Road next year, or the year after.
Or the tenements of Whitechapel and Stepney. Felix did not tell her mother the other reason why she’d come. She found it hard to admit to herself.
At last the ambulance swung through an archway and came to a stop. Charlie opened the doors at the back. They had just beaten the sunset.
‘So this is it,’ said Felix, staggering down the steps at the back of the ambulance, unlocking her stiff knees and stamping her feet – partly to relieve her pins and needles, partly because it was so cold outside. She tried to stamp away the sinking feeling too. It felt so grim here. What had she let herself in for?
Doug looked up at rusticated stone walls rising on three sides of the courtyard. ‘Medieval, isn’t it? Literally. What is this place?’
‘It used to be a monastery,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s a base hospital now. Takes the cases that can travel from the front. And local casualties of course. We’re all five of us working here until further notice.’
Kitty bustled around hugging old friends, ticking off lists, showing off the new sterilisers, re-organising the storerooms. The others followed her, dazed, and trying not to show it.
‘Come and inspect the wards now,’ she said at last.
Felix hesitated. It was a stupid thought. But she couldn’t block it out, and it made her heart throb in her throat. She pictured Nat lying there, his head on a crisp white pillowcase. She imagined a wavering smile of recognition. Running across to him, half-sobbing. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. This is life, not a fairy tale. Anyway, he’ll be off training somewhere still. They couldn’t possibly send men – boys – out to battle without teaching them how to fight. She straightened her back and followed Kitty into the old refectory.
The operating tables stood where six months earlier monks had gathered for daily meals. A few curtains pulled across the corners of the room marked off the staff’s sleeping quarters. The beds were in corridors and cells, neat and orderly, but defiantly out of place. Most were empty, waiting. Propped up in one bed, a child of about six or so was stroking a bandaged stump listlessly with one good hand. Its hair was cropped. Felix couldn’t tell if it was a girl or boy.
‘It’s quiet now, much quieter than when I left,’ said Kitty. ‘The latest action’s mostly been on the La Coruña road, they’ve just been telling me. It’s a relief, I can tell you. Just random bombing round here for weeks now.’
‘Just,’ said Charlie, expressively, his eyes on the other occupied beds. They were nearly all civilian casualties in this room. The practicantes were settling them for the night, said Kitty. ‘Medical students mostly. We’ve lost a lot of doctors to the other side.’
A small gaggle of white-aproned Spanish girls assembled, summoned by one of Kitty’s rapid-fire instructions. They shuffled together, whispering and giggling behind their hands, and eyed up the new volunteers.
‘Aha, las chicas! Here they are!’ Kitty greeted each one with kisses that knocked her spectacles askew. ‘Meet the team . . . this place would be nowhere without this lot, I tell you. Washing, cooking . . . and you wouldn’t believe how their nursing skills are coming along too. Felix, come and meet Teresa, and this is Maria, Amelia, Concepçion . . . and, come along, come along, now let me see . . .’ Kitty’s flow was cut short by the sight of a girl she didn’t recognise. She hung back from the others, and they made no effort to encourage her forward.
‘You’re new here?’ Kitty asked in Spanish, and the girl nodded, still looking at the floor.
‘What’s your name, dear?’
‘Dolores.’ She spoke in a husky whisper, and then, like an afterthought, darted her hand out to be shaken.
‘Welcome, welcome. Encantada . . .’ Kitty sped on in Spanish. ‘Look! Fresh blood for us! Meet Mr Smilie, our new surgeon. And this is Dr John Phillips, from England . . . Charlie, our driver . . . Felicity . . . call her Felix . . .’
Felix smiled hard, exhausted but eager. This girl, Dolores, looked pitifully shy. Felix felt her own confidence grow in contrast. Maybe she could draw this chica out of herself a little, in time. They could learn how to manage everything together.
‘Salud,’ said Felix. She shook Dolores’s hand, and didn’t let go until she’d met her eye. Still not a smile.
After issuing orders to the girls, Kitty glanced again at Dolores and lowered her voice. ‘Some of the local girls are finding all this awfully difficult. You have to be patient. It’s just not what they’ve been brought up to do. They’re not used to it. Simply no experience.’
‘Of washing and cooking?’ said Charlie bluntly.
‘No, not that. It’s the nursing.’ Kitty’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Bodies,’ she mouthed.
‘Nobody’s fond of corpses,’ pointed out Mr Smilie.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean dead ones,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s the wounded men. They don’t like touching their bodies. Washing and so on. Say it’s not proper. That’s what they’ve been taught.’
Felix kept on smiling at Dolores. She felt uncomfortable discussing her in English like that, right in front of her. The girl must have realised, for she blushed, and walked away after the others.
‘Weren’t there nurses in Spain before the war?’ Charlie asked. ‘This country is even more medieval than I thought.’
‘Oh, there were. But they were nuns, mostly. Now they’re on the other side of course. With the Rebels. The Catholic Church has always been hand in glove with the Nationalists, you know. The clergy, at any rate. Too many centuries of running the show themselves to put up with a Republic.’
‘The Bishops see this war as a holy crusade, I heard,’ added Mr Smilie. ‘Kill a Red and save your soul.’
‘I suppose the last thing the padres want is social revolution,’ said Charlie, eyebrows raised.
‘Or women voting. Or peasants reading. That’s why there’s been such a backlash against the Church – how do you think we got this place?’ said Kitty. ‘But not to worry . . . times are changing, aren’t they? Onwards and upwards. Workers of the world unite.’
Felix can’t control her dreams. Perhaps it’s the drugs they’ve given her. It feels a kind of madness. She’s with Nat, always. Nowhere she quite recognises. Somewhere out of time. But they are alone and together at last. She’s inhaling his outward breaths, intoxicating herself with the smell of his skin, dispelling the odour of death. He’s turning her face to kiss her, pulling her towards him, and she’s letting herself go, almost floating. She wants to fall. Finally, she feels safe.
She’s wearing an enormous coat – it swamps her – and Nat has slipped his arms round her inside the coat so that it’s wrapped round both of them. His hand explores the wing of her shoulder blade.
‘Wait,’ he says. ‘I want to be closer. I want to feel you against me.’ As he says this he’s disentangling himself from her, moving away, and she can hardly bear this minute separation. ‘You’re so warm. I’ve missed you so much.’ He unbuttons his jacket, and shrugs it off, never taking his eyes off her face.
And then she sees the gun and remembers everything.