Nat watched the two girls walking away from the yard, towards the outskirts of the village. Dolores held herself stiffly, while Felix bent towards her. Once she tried to take the Spanish nurse’s arm, but the other girl shrugged her off and shook her head. She seemed to be leading the way. Nat frowned. Some kind of argument. Talk about bad timing. He just hoped they wouldn’t take too long to sort it out. He didn’t have very long.
He paced the road outside and the snow creaked under his boots. They were all saying this was the worst winter Spain had seen in twenty years. He could believe it.
Ten minutes later the girls were out of sight. Why so far? Distracted, he guessed. They had both looked very agitated. Nat was sympathetic, up to a point. Cooped up like that with everyone, you had to stretch your legs after a while. He’d be driven mad by it too.
Another few minutes went by, and Nat began to curse quietly. His feet were freezing. Might as well walk up and meet them coming back. He’d get a little longer of Felix’s company. Though he could do without Dolores, he thought irritably, and her blank staring eyes. He remembered the way they made him feel at the blood clinic in Madrid. Uncomfortable. Uncertain.
Five minutes brisk march and still he couldn’t see them.
He quickened his step, and followed the girls’ footprints up a track turning into the mountains, where peasants gathered the thorn trees for fuel, and grazed their animals in the summer. Why on earth had they bothered to come all this way?
The noise of his own feet in the snow masked every other sound, so Nat stopped to listen. His breath caught raspingly in his throat and burned his nostrils. Somewhere far below he heard the icy music of a stream. And then voices at last. Voices carry in snow.
He couldn’t hear their words, but he caught the strength of emotion and it made him uneasy. Perhaps it was better to wait where he was for the moment, just out of sight. He didn’t want to eavesdrop. This wasn’t his business, not his argument.
A small stone building stood between him and the girls. It was roofless now: only three walls left, and these half-tumbled down. A shepherd’s hut, he supposed. He could take shelter there, and keep out of sight until Felix was done. He walked towards it, assembling in his mind a version of the fantasy he’d been forming for months. This time the hut was newly built and whole, with a huge fire burning in its hearth, and a meal on the table, and a bed that actually had sheets, clean ones. He and Felix were alone, with all the time in the world and nobody else for miles around to look or listen or judge. And afterwards, when they were done, he planned to draw her properly. Paint her even. And every bit of her, this time. A warm, loving painting, it would be, in yellow ochre and raw sienna, with shadows of Prussian blue. He’d have her looking straight out at him, gently daring. That was her way. And he’d have to be quick, because he didn’t want her to get cold, or be apart from her for too long.
Then Felix’s voice changed. It had been pleading before. Now it was raised in disbelief, her words as clear as anything, her Spanish fluent and furious.
‘On purpose? No . . . please no . . . I can’t believe you could. You’re no better than a murderer.’
Silence.
‘You are a murderer.’
Asesina? Reaching the hut, Nat found himself staggering thigh-deep in drifted snow. Steady. Don’t rush to conclusions. Surely he had misheard. He crouched beside the wall, by the remains of a window opening, and waited for Dolores’s response.
Their backs were half-turned, their faces only partly visible. They stood perhaps twenty feet away. Her reply was cold and calm.
‘In war, killing is not murder. It is war.’