They talk for about three hours. George gives Felix the barest details of the retreats: ambulances abandoned, nine drivers dead, four doctors. Three nurses and eight stretcher-bearers lost. He tells her names. He doesn’t tell her about the time he edged along a road in the dark with no idea who held the hillside above. Nor how it felt to pull the pin on a Mills bomb and pitch it towards looming black shapes coming at you from shadows.
It is over now. The Battalion is getting its strength back. France has opened the border, and new Russian equipment is pouring in. Barcelona will never surrender.
George is worried that so much conversation will exhaust Felix, but she seems to gain energy by the minute. As the afternoon wears on, the light outside seems to liquify.
‘You look like an angel, now,’ George says, daringly. ‘With rather a bad haircut.’
‘Thanks,’ says Felix. ‘You’re looking pretty luminous yourself.’
‘I say, you don’t feel up to a walk, do you? I haven’t been on a beach since we went to Whitstable. Do you remember?’
‘May Day bank holiday. 1936. Of course I remember.’
‘I’d love to hear the sea again.’
‘Me too.’ It’s odd, the way she says that. As though she’d never thought of it before. And there it is, the sea, right outside her window. She smiles suddenly. ‘And, do you know, Neville was right about the oysters. I haven’t had one since. But it was fun, wasn’t it?’ Felix slides her legs from under the covers. She pauses. ‘I never thought I’d feel homesick. But just now I do. Do you ever want to pack your bags?’
George hesitates.
‘Not much to pack . . . But yes, of course I’m tempted. I’ve come close, too.’ Every time he moves a wounded man onto a stretcher and hears the grinding of shattered bones, George is tempted. ‘But even if we wanted to, we couldn’t go home now. You can’t just change your mind about something like this. Not when you’ve promised.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Remember what you said on the boat to France?’
Felix shakes her head, lowers her eyes.
‘You said Fascism anywhere is a threat to people everywhere. I didn’t believe you then,’ said George. ‘But now I do.’
Felix looks up. George resists the urge to drop to his knees and tell her that despite all he’s just said, and the fact that he means every word of it, actually he would do anything for her: he would become a deserter today, abandon everything, do anything at all to make her happy. The urge becomes easier to resist when he realises that he already has made her happier, simply by coming. The dull deadness that frightened him so much when she first awoke is leaving her eyes.
‘I reckon I can manage a slow stroll,’ she says at last. ‘Pass me those.’
George finds her alpargatas, and bends at her feet, tying up the strings. Businesslike, he thinks. That’s the way. He steadies himself on the bedstead as he stands up. ‘Have you got a dressing gown?’
‘Don’t fuss. It’s so warm here.’
They join a small procession of ambling figures also dressed in striped pyjamas and heading for the sea. Some use crutches, many have casts and bandages. Lovely clean white bandages. They talk quietly, in lots of languages, calling out the occasional salud! George and Felix wander with them down to a path along the beach. It is lined with palm trees, and their fronds rustle in a way that makes George think suddenly of an ether machine.
‘You can’t beat Spain for sunsets,’ says George, when the redness begins to spill out onto the waves on the horizon.
‘Oh, let’s take off our shoes and walk on the sand!’
‘Come on then.’ Instead of asking if it’s sensible, in her state, George offers to carry her alpargatas. Bending his head over a knot in his own bootlace, he tries to work out how to extract the information he needs. He pulls Felix up to standing, and keeps hold of her arm as they sink into the sand, both breathless with the loveliness of it all.
Then he blunders into her laughter.
‘I expect you’ve lost friends over here,’ he says, and watches her face. Like cement, it sets.
‘Yes. I have.’
George swallows the words: ‘Anyone special?’ Too crass. And the answer too obvious. She couldn’t look like that for just anyone. He almost regrets asking.
‘Sorry. We don’t need to talk about it. But I’m sorry.’
He really is sorry. But he also has to hide a disturbing leap of relief.
Time to change the subject.
‘Tell me, what’s the food like here?’
She brightens. ‘Heavenly. Real sugar. And fresh eggs.’
So George starts telling her about all the ways he knows of cooking eggs in Spain – in autoclaves and upside-down helmets and primus stoves of course. And how he once used an egg to mend a leaking radiator in a field ambulance.
They walk past men and women in groups and past solitary figures staring out at the Mediterranean sea. The sky becomes redder before it grows darker, and together they find the first star. Her shoes are strung around his neck, and Felix nestles into him as they walk, and all the time, with the hand he keeps in his right pocket, George turns over the ring he’s been carrying since Paris. His insurance. He kept it because it was small and light and he knew that if he ever needed money to get away it could be useful. Also because he’d bought it, and he couldn’t give up on what he’d bought it for. One day, he thinks, one day maybe she’ll tease him for that.
While there is still light enough to see the simple jewel, he takes out the ring and shows it to Felix.
‘Look. I brought something for you.’
He doesn’t exactly expect her to throw her arms around him.
At first she doesn’t say a word, or even look up. She just takes a deep breath. Her mouth quivers a little. She is deciding. Dear God, she is deciding. George keeps still. He actually steps away a pace. He wants to give her space to think. He loves her more than ever, but he is frightened of tipping her the wrong way with the strength of his love.
Finally she speaks, not quite meeting his eye.
‘Well, look at us now. Sea, sunset, palm trees. Nothing could be more perfect. There can only be one answer, can’t there?’
‘You’ll marry me?’ He has to be clear. ‘You really will?’
‘When all this is really over. Yes. I’ll marry you, George. Thank you for asking.’