The bar could have been chilly with its painted tiles and flagstones, but it was crammed with people, and warm with their body heat. They’d been lucky to spot another couple, just slipping away from these stools. It had been hard to know where to take her. Nat couldn’t imagine her in an English pub, but everything was different in Spain.
He reached across the barrel that served for a table, and held the candle up to Felix’s face. She was more lovely than he’d remembered. Far more. Felix turned her head, this way and that, like a film star posing for flashing cameras, while he absorbed the line of her jaw and neck.
‘Convinced now? You don’t think I’m an imposter any more? Or a Fascist spy? A fifth columnist?’
Shouting above the hubbub of the bar, she swished what was left of her hair, and he simply stared. He couldn’t stop himself, though he knew his scrutiny was making her nervous. There was red in the brown of her hair, he saw now: Venetian red, or maybe terra rossa in the sunlight. It was the first time Nat had noticed the down on her face too, a faint and fascinating silveriness that ran into the hollow beneath her cheekbones and disappeared. The hollow seemed more pronounced now. He had to stop himself from running his finger down it.
‘Do you?’ she said, tailing her hand back and forth along her collarbone, as if she could actually feel his gaze penetrating her skin.
‘What? No. No, I never thought that.’ He just couldn’t stop staring. ‘Mind yourself now. Don’t set yourself on fire.’
‘Put the candle down then . . . look, you’re dripping wax everywhere.’
She scooped up a finger-full, warm and smooth, and rolled it between her fingers. The empty bottle that held the candle was draped in wax, like a stalagmite. You could hardly see the glass any more. Nat set it back down, and gazed at Felix through the halo of the flame. God, it was good to see her. She couldn’t know how good.
No need to write now, he thought.
Her fingertips went on moulding the wax methodically. When she turned her hand palm up, he saw how the blue map of veins on the inside of her wrist faded into the pale skin of her forearm. The skin was so delicate just there. After a few seconds of silence, Felix frowned at him. ‘What? . . . what is it?’
‘I can’t really say . . . sorry . . . didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’ He couldn’t seem to say quite the right thing. ‘Just . . . like I said before . . . I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. And here you are. I keep wondering when I’ll wake up.’ He cupped his hand behind his ear to catch her reply through the ringing in his head.
‘Don’t you feel that a lot, here?’
‘In Spain?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose I do.’
‘Sometimes nothing seems quite real.’ She looked a bit puzzled.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘But then again, what could be more real?’
‘Exactly. You’re exactly right.’
They looked at each other some more, relishing the understanding between them. It gave Nat a strange sensation. His chest seemed to be swelling up, filling with something warm. Floaty. Watch it. Watch it. Easy. A drink. That was what they needed. Would she be all right if he left her for a moment?
‘Thirsty?’ Nat looked around. More people had arrived. ‘Wine or sherry?’
‘Sherry?’ She giggled. Like a girl, he thought. She is a girl. He loved the sound of her light girl’s voice, hard though it was to hear. Men’s voices were all the same. He’d had enough of men’s voices.
‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked. He wanted to share everything, know everything about her.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I’d never thought about sherry coming from Spain before. It always makes me think of Christmas at home.’
‘Makes you homesick, does it?’ Nat was sympathetic.
‘The opposite.’ Her eyes widened, and she shook her head firmly, and frowned. ‘Really, quite the opposite.’
‘The opposite?’
‘It makes me realise what I’ve escaped. The annual sherry ritual. So predictable. So irritating. So much fuss about nothing. Ghastly. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m talking about it. Of all things . . .’
‘I want to hear.’ He leaned forward.
‘Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not a proper ritual, not religious or anything. It’s just that’s when we always drink it. On Christmas Day, once a year. The sherry bottle comes out of the corner cupboard, after church and before lunch. Harvey’s Bristol Cream. It’s funny how it never seems to run out.’
If he concentrated on her lips, it was easier to hear. And her lips were so lovely. Shining.
‘Neville, that’s my brother, he always gets the glasses out – Waterford Crystal, don’t you know? – and then wipes them all, terribly carefully, one by one . . .’ (She was laughing – at her brother?) ‘. . . as if they were, oh I don’t know . . . the Crown Jewels, or the Holy Grail or something. I mean they’re just sherry glasses. Cut-glass sherry glasses, for God’s sake. Six of them altogether. Not that we need six. I think they must have been a wedding present. To my parents, that is.’
Her eyes softened, and withdrew from the Madrid barroom. What was she remembering?
‘And . . . ?’ He wanted to get her back. He wanted to know everything he could, as quickly as possible. He had so little to go on, and not much time. He wanted to know how to think about her, later.
‘And last Christmas – no, of course, it was the year before – last year I was already here. The last few months have gone by so quickly. Anyway, the year before last, George joined us for Christmas for the first time. So there were four of us, which was better.’
‘George?’
‘He’s my brother’s friend. Well, a family friend now, really, you could say.’ She seemed on the point of elaborating, but she checked herself. ‘Yes, a family friend. He spends a lot of time with us now. Awfully kind. Very good to us all. A second son, as far as Mother’s concerned. But that was his first Christmas with us. Though I suppose he must have been there last Christmas too . . .’
Again, Nat felt an urgent need to bring her back to the here and now. He wasn’t interested in this George.
‘And what happened?’ he asked, too impatiently. Felix seemed to shake herself a little, like a dog coming out of water. Then she looked straight at him again.
‘Oh, nothing really. I don’t know why I thought of it. I suppose because it all seems so irrelevant now. All that worrying about things.’ Pausing briefly, she finished in a rush. ‘What happened was that George tried to give me some sherry, and Neville wouldn’t let him, because he said I was too young, and George thought I wasn’t, and they had a kind of argument, except it wasn’t really an argument, because they never have proper arguments, not shouting, or anything. It was more of a disagreement and I thought it was funny because they were both so quietly insistent and wouldn’t give in and I didn’t even like sherry anyway – I’d tried it in secret already, horrible stuff – and so I didn’t care. But they gave me some in the end and of course I drank it all far too quickly and then I felt in a very silly mood, and kept laughing at Neville and he didn’t like it at all. He was very cross with me.’
‘I can’t imagine anyone being cross with you,’ said Nat. He couldn’t really imagine a house with cut-glass sherry glasses either. And all the family arguments he’d ever known were conducted at top volume. With the neighbours joining in too, often enough. Through the walls.
‘That sounds a bit soppy.’
She was teasing him, wasn’t she?
‘Sorry.’ You make me feel soppy, he thought to himself, smiling, feeling schmaltzier than ever. He still hadn’t managed to get to the bar, to get drinks, but when it came to it he didn’t want to leave her even for that length of time. ‘It’s true.’
‘Shall I tell you my diagnosis?’
‘Mmmm.’ He was back in Whitechapel, feeling her fingertips exploring the cut on his head, tingling, and remembering the smell of her hair when she passed under his arm as he held the café door open. He was outside the hospital once more, about to kiss her, properly. He could hardly focus on what she was saying.
‘Female deprivation. It’s turned you soft.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s very common, specially in the army. You might almost call it a syndrome.’
‘See it a lot, do you?’ It was becoming a huge effort to speak. He made himself concentrate on her eyes. But he was transfixed by her lips. Her teeth were lovely too. Not perfect, but the slight irregularity made them more interesting.
‘Oh, an awful lot. It’s terribly common in these parts. In its most extreme form, it can lead a man to propose to a complete stranger. We nurses have to have special training, to learn how to deal with it.’
‘You do?’ He wondered where this was leading. He wondered if they should leave the bar, and where else they could go.
‘No, of course not. Though maybe we should. Really, I’m surprised you’re so gullible!’
When she laughed again, it broke the strange spell he was under for a moment, and he laughed too. Nat loved being teased by her. It made him feel as if they’d known each other for ever. It had been the other way round, he reflected, the first time they met. He remembered her utter confusion when he talked about the Party. The Communist Party, he’d had to explain. She’d seemed such an innocent then. Although, in a way, she still did.
She reached round the barrel, and put a hand on his knee, pressing down on it firmly. He hadn’t realised he was twitching again. It was a habit he didn’t notice any more. He was always jiggling his foot. As if he was waiting for something, and couldn’t bear to wait any longer.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, so quietly that he saw rather than heard her words.