‘My God,’ said Felix. ‘My God, Dolores, whose side are you on?’
Dolores didn’t answer.
‘And what kind of a fool am I?’ Felix whispered to herself, powerless to move, but still too shocked to feel real terror.
‘An honest fool, of course.’ Dolores’s voice had the snap of icicles. Felix had never heard her sound so cold. ‘Too honest to suspect me. For far longer than I could have hoped.’
Like a puppet, Felix kept shaking her head. Her eyes ached with staring. Dolores stared back at her. ‘I saw the signs,’ Felix said. ‘I knew what you were doing. But I couldn’t see it. And each time I just blamed myself.’
‘That was exactly why I could risk it.’
‘I thought . . . I thought it was the strain of it all . . . that you were cracking up. Making mistakes. I even tried to protect you.’
‘Yes. I realised. Thank you.’
‘But how could you? Blood . . . the best thing we have. The purest thing. And you – you turned it into poison. How could you?’
‘If I tell you, you won’t understand. You could never understand.’ Dolores was looking at Felix with a mixture of pity and disgust. ‘You think everything is so simple. Black, white. Right, wrong.’
‘And?’
‘It isn’t. I wish it was.’
‘Of course it is. At least some things are. Murder is wrong. You know that.’
‘Is it really? Always?’
‘Always.’
Why is she asking me this? Felix felt too stunned to make sense of any of this. She couldn’t settle her thoughts; just when she needed to harness them, they refused to work for her. I thought she was a Christian, for God’s sake, a Catholic. How many times have I seen her pray, and said nothing, and let her alone?
‘Don’t think this is something I ever wanted to do. But I had to. Just as you have to do what you have to do.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Felix felt utterly helpless. She realised she was repeating the words, over and over again, standing there, shaking her head, looking at the girl she thought she knew so well. She had to concentrate. It was no good getting hysterical. Dolores’s steady gaze was making her worse though.
‘You are very conscientious, Felix,’ she said. ‘Many times I thought I would not get away with it.’
‘How many times? Tell me. Exactly.’ Felix tried to think and to remember. She needed details. She wanted to punish herself with the information. After all, she had let this happen.
Such a clever form of sabotage. So easy to arrange. So hard to detect.
A bad reaction to blood isn’t always obvious. It can happen weeks after treatment, long after a patient has been sent to the rear. Dr Bethune had taught them that in Madrid. She remembered Dolores’s amazement at the fact. Another patient came to mind, a country boy with a lovely smile and a bit of a squint. A rash had appeared at the site of the cannula. Felix had noticed in time to interrupt that transfusion, replacing it with a saline drip. She remembered wondering at the time how Dolores could have failed to notice. The luck of that man! But what about all the others she’d never know about?
‘How many times?’ Felix demanded again. Dolores’s hand moved to her pocket, but Felix hardly noticed.
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Dolores. ‘I lost count. And I don’t even know how successful I was each time. How could I tell? But it was always worth trying.’
Felix wondered if she had caught the sound of a distant plane. Right now, she would have welcomed the sound of aviones. She felt a terrible hunger for something utterly violent to happen, right now, something quite out of her control that would wipe out what she had to deal with. And herself with it.
The noise was just the wind. Keep her talking, thought Felix. Don’t stop talking.
‘Last night. This morning, I mean. You heated the blood to damage the cells, didn’t you? That’s why the flask felt hot.’
‘Yes, today I did. I tried everything today. Because it was the last of the donor blood. And I knew we were moving on soon. Some places are harder than others. Here it’s been easy.’
‘So you lied about Doug. He didn’t order that transfusion for Ramón.’
‘Of course not,’ Dolores agreed simply, taking a step towards Felix.
‘But the other times . . . you haven’t always heated it, have you? I’d have noticed. I’m sure I would have noticed.’
Felix moved back, slowly, taking her eyes off Dolores. Both hands were in her pockets now. She seemed to be feeling for something. Something that would explain? A letter, an order? Felix still couldn’t imagine how Dolores had suddenly become her enemy.
‘Sometimes I heat a flask and then return it to the fridge. When I’ve known I would be the first to use it. At El Escorial it was the labels. Two of the donors – one was a driver, one was a local woman – I simply recorded the wrong blood groups when they first came to us. You thought you were giving universal blood, but you weren’t. But then Kitty noticed. Yes, you remember that. So I had to try something else.’
‘What did you try?’
Another step forward. Another step back. For the first time Felix realised how far they had come. How alone she was.
‘Just what you taught me. Or rather, everything you taught me not to do. I have added too much citrate to the blood, I have shaken it, I have exposed it to air and bacteria. Spat in it. I’ve even tried to freeze it. All the things Dr Bethune said could affect its safety. Yes, everything. And you kept reminding me. Thank you for that.’
Again, Felix wanted to hurt herself. This was her fault. All her fault.
‘A bursting feeling,’ Dolores continued. ‘I remember that’s what one man told me he felt. He didn’t know what I had done, of course. I was sorry for him. I told him he was dying a hero. Don’t think I wasn’t kind to them. None of them had any idea. But I had to do what I could. I’d promised.’
‘Promised . . . ? But how could you kill men who are fighting for justice?’
‘Because I am fighting for justice too.’ Dolores face lit up.
She wants to confess, thought Felix, confused. She has been waiting for this moment. I will hear what she has to say. But I can’t absolve her. I won’t.
‘You asked me before whose side I am on. I’ll tell you. My God. And my family. My own family. Not the politicians. Not the bishops. Not an idea, or a theory, or a principle. Simply my own flesh and blood. Mine. And I always have been.’
‘Your family? Who are they?’
‘Nobodies . . . what did you think? No, we were just an ordinary family. My mother, me, my brother.’
Like my family. Just as I have always felt.
‘Quite ordinary. At least, we were, until 1936.’
‘And then?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Felix, you know. The war changed everyone.’
Silence.
‘Maybe, for these times, we are still ordinary,’ Dolores said bitterly.
Look away, look away. Don’t let her see your uncertainty. Felix stared up at a pale, colourless sky; the kind of sky that warns of more snow to come. She hoped by staring that her tears would not spill out, but it was no good so she scrunched her eyes to keep them in.
‘Tell me what you mean. Tell me what happened,’ said Felix. ‘I’ve wanted to ask you for so long. I always thought . . . I always imagined . . . well, there’s no point in telling you now.’
Dolores took a deep breath. She was underdressed and beginning to shake with cold, but her voice was surprisingly steady. It sounded like a story she had told herself many times.
‘It was late July. A Sunday. My mother had gone to early Mass. I was at home studying. Everything was very quiet.
‘Our village was not yet affected by the uprising against the government, the coup. We knew something about it of course. But not what might happen. And then a boy came to the door. His mother was a friend of my own mother’s. He came to tell us. To warn us.’
‘What about?’
‘There had been a meeting, the night before. A vote. They had voted to burn the church.’
Everything was so complicated here, Felix despaired. This wasn’t the first time she had heard of such a thing. Not had it surprised her. All through Spain she’d seen huge ornate churches towering over hovels. Unbelievable wealth and unimaginable poverty, side by side. She knew what a backlash of violence and hatred the power of the clergy had caused at the beginning of the war. The Red Terror. That’s what they used to call it in the newspapers in England. Nuns murdered. Priests shot. Nothing organised about it. What was it Doug had muttered? Revenge is a kind of wild justice. Something like that. He liked to quote things.
‘This was the first you knew of it?’ The longer she could keep Dolores talking, the more time she would have to work out what to do.
‘Of course. We didn’t go to the meetings, my mother and I. Father Antonio always told us not to.’
‘So what did you do?’
It was like picking a scab. You know it will bleed.
‘I went to the church. As fast as I could, I ran to try to stop them, to reason with them, stop the burning. Father Antonio meant everything to my mother. And he was a good man. He looked after us after my father died. When my mother was in despair.’
Felix couldn’t believe she had got everything so wrong.
‘The bells kept on ringing. Ringing and ringing, ringing and ringing, more and more urgently as I ran faster and faster.’
Dolores was talking so fast; it was a struggle to keep up. Despite her rising terror, Felix found herself moving closer, concentrating with all her might on Dolores’s rapidly moving lips, which were pale with cold.
‘Oh, please slow down,’ cried Felix.
‘But I was already too late.’
Dolores stopped talking and stared into space, remembering. From far below, down in the valley, the sounds of straining engines reached them. Faint shouts and curses followed. A truck was stuck on the road they had been walking on. The convoy was starting to leave. Felix gasped. She’d been so caught up in Dolores’s story that she had almost forgotten Nat was waiting for her. He would go. She would miss him. It was unbearable. And still she had no idea what to do.
Dolores didn’t seem to notice Felix’s reaction. She hardly seemed aware of where she was.
‘Father Antonio refused to leave the church. My mother refused to leave him. He was trapped. They had poured petrol on the pews and he was cut off, in front of the altar. But he showed no fear. Even when the flames were at his feet, he didn’t move. He shut his eyes, and he prayed. Until he couldn’t speak.’
‘And your mother?’
‘It had been my mother ringing the bell, trying to get help. But just as I pushed open the church door, she ran into the fire, straight towards him. She thought she could rescue him. I hesitated – I was so frightened – I hesitated too long. The flames were everywhere. I doused my shawl in holy water and managed to pull her out. God was on my side. Someone helped me get her out into the plaza. Water was brought, a blanket. We wrapped her up. She spoke to me. And she made me promise. That I would avenge his death, and defend the Church. That was all. She did not live much longer. They were her last words.’
Her face hardened again.
‘So what are you going to do now, Felix? Arrest me?’
She took a defiant step forward. She managed a slight swagger. Felix briefly wondered if she might raise her hands in mock surrender. But no. Both hands stayed firmly in her pockets. What was it she had in there? A picture? Her mother? One hand seemed to be turning something over. What was she going to show her? Dolores’s clenched jaw jutted out at an unfamiliar angle.
You might think that war would prepare you for sudden noises. But if anything, it sets you even more on edge. Dolores probably didn’t hear it herself. A faint click and then an ear-splitting gunshot which shook the snow from the thorn bushes. It was Felix who screamed. Dolores simply twisted and crumpled.
Felix stared at the body in the snow. Her scream faded into a high-pitched whimper, like that of a dog, begging to be brought in from the cold.