The Gate of the Sun. Derek Lambert
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‘You know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Ana said. ‘Fascists.’
‘Anyone with any property or position. Old scores are being settled.’
‘But not with pregnant women. When is the baby due?’
‘I am followed wherever I go,’ Martine said. ‘They want Antonio badly. He knew many things. The baby is due in February,’ she said.
‘You were followed here?’
‘Does it matter? We are sisters-in-law. But there are certain places I cannot visit …’ She hesitated. ‘Can I trust you to keep a secret?’
‘It depends. The names and addresses of Mola’s Fifth Column? No, you cannot trust me.’
Martine fanned herself with a black and silver fan; her hair, once so precise, was damp with sweat. She said, ‘Does the man in the check jacket mean anything to you?’
Ana frowned; it meant nothing.
‘He is an Englishman. And he wears a check jacket.’
‘Stop playing games,’ Ana said.
‘I want you to swear …’
‘I’ll swear nothing. Now, please, I am hungry and Jesús will be back from the market soon.’
Martine said abruptly, ‘I must escape from Spain. For Marisa’s sake. For the sake of your nephew,’ she said slyly, stroking her belly with one hand.
‘The man in the check jacket can help you?’
‘His name is Lance. He’s sometimes known as Dagger. He’s an attaché at the British Embassy in Calle Fernando el Santo. It’s full of refugees …’
‘From Mola’s army? From Franco’s army?’
‘Don’t joke,’ Martine said. ‘You know what I mean. Refugees from the militia, from the Assault Guards. Lance has been getting prisoners out of gaol. He may be able to get them out of Spain.’
‘And you want me to …’
‘I can’t,’ Martine said.
Ana was silent. She thought about Antonio and then she thought about Martine’s daughter, Marisa, and then she thought about the unborn child and then she thought about the priest.
She said, ‘Would you mind travelling with a man of God, a black crow?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Martine said.
Ana considered telling her sister-in-law about the priest. But no, you didn’t confide in women such as her brother’s wife: they used secrets as others use bullets. But maybe this man Lance could take the priest off her hands. And Martine.
She thought, Mi madre! What am I, a daughter of revolution, doing plotting the escape of a hypocritical priest and the daughter of a Falangist?
‘Where does this Englishman live?’ she asked.
‘Calle de Espalter. Number 11. You could go there pretending to offer your services as a cleaning woman.’
Ana laughed. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I almost admire you.’
At that moment Jesús returned carrying a basket half filled with sprouting potatoes.
Ana went to Calle de Espalter, a short, tree-lined street adjoining the Retiro, a few days later. It was the beginning of October and the air had cooled and the trees in the park were weary of summer. Militiamen, rifles slung over their shoulders, patrolled the street because it was in a wealthy and elegant part of Madrid; a banner fluttered in the breeze: LONG LIVE THE SOVIET. Broken glass crunched under Ana’s feet.
Two assault guards outside the thin block regarded her suspiciously. They wore blue uniforms and they were the Republic’s answer to the Guardia Civil who, with their shiny black tricorns and green-grey uniforms, were always suspected of Fascist sympathies.
‘What are you doing here?’ one of them asked her. He was smoking a thin cigarette and smoke dribbled from his flattened nose.
‘Do I have to give reasons for walking in my own city?’ She folded her arms and stared at the guards whose reputation for killing was unequalled in Spain. Had they not assassinated José Calvo Sotelo and helped to spark off the war?
‘You have to give us reasons,’ the guard said but he regarded her warily because some of the women of Madrid were becoming more ferocious than their menfolk: La Pasionaria had led them from the kitchen and the bedroom on to the dangerous streets.
‘Then I will give you one: because I am alive.’
The guard rubbed his dented nose and looked at his colleague for help. His companion said: ‘Papers?’
‘Of course.’ She made no move to show them.
‘If you will forgive me,’ the first guard said, pointing at her cheap red skirt and white blouse, ‘you do not look as though you live here. Do you, perhaps, work for a capitalist?’
Ana spat. The assault guard took a step back.
‘I hope to find work. I have to feed my children and my husband who is the leader of a militia group. But not with a capitalist: with a foreigner. Now if you will excuse me.’ She stepped between them, continued up the street, turned into number 11 and mounted the stairs.
The man who let her into the small apartment was thin with a strong nose and a small moustache; he laughed a lot and he wore a check jacket.
She asked if it was safe to talk. This made him laugh and she began to wonder if this was truly the man who had supposedly whisked prisoners from gaols past the guns of waiting murder squads.
She said, ‘I have heard that you help people on the death lists.’
He stared at her and for a moment she glimpsed the wisdom which he was at pains to conceal.
‘But you, señora,’ he said in his accented Spanish, ‘are not on those lists. You, surely, are a woman of the revolution.’
She told him about Martine and the children, one unborn, and she told him about the priest. She added, ‘If anyone knows I came to you for help I will be killed.’
‘No one will know,’ he said and this time he didn’t laugh. ‘But what am I to do with your sister-in-law and her daughter and your priest?’
‘Hide them in your embassy?’
‘Most of them are in a private hospital and it’s stuffed full already.’
‘Please, Señor Lance.’
‘I will make inquiries.’
‘La palabra inglesa,’ she said. ‘The word of an Englishman. That is all I need to know.’
‘But …’
‘You have made me very happy,’ she said when, hands spread in submission, he laughed; she laughed too.
He made a note of the addresses where Martine and the priest were staying and led her to the door.
‘One last thing, Señor Lance. If anyone asks, I came for a job cleaning your apartment.’
She walked into the sunlit street where, behind shuttered windows, families lived in twilight.
Madrid was doomed.
How could it be otherwise? The Government had packed its bags and on 6 November fled to Valencia, leaving behind a sense of betrayal – and an ageing general, José Miaja, who looked more like a bespectacled monk than a soldier, in charge of its defence. Radio Lisbon had broadcast a vivid description of General Francisco Franco entering the city on a white horse. And the foreign correspondents viewing the Fascist build-up to the final assault from the ninth floor of the Telefónica on the Gran