Doves of War: Four Women of Spain. Paul Preston
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could not brake in time. The woman was scared and bruised but otherwise unharmed. At one level, Pip was horrified but quickly recovered, commenting later, ‘I have gained an instantaneous cold-bloodedness in this war from having to show no feelings in my work when my insides are writhing. And ever since I was shelled at Escatrón I have a complete cold control over myself which is very useful.’114
Pip got her mother to send out 500 bedcovers, lots of white material, cloaks, boots together with some peach brandy and 10,000 cigarettes. She drove for twenty hours to Sanlúcar to spend her leave with Ataúlfo. She finally began to recover from the ravages of the war.
I live in a sort of peaceful haze of pleasure. The continual trouble of having to watch my step with Ataúlfo so as never to appear more than good friends when I really long to be close to him, to touch him and so on is amusing despite its unpleasantness and frustration. It is like a continual game. I let myself go as close to flirting as I dare but without ever going a step too far, not even by so much as a look. I don’t know how long I shall have the self-control and placidity to be able to go on like this but for the moment it hardly disturbs my happiness at all, rather adds a flavour to it if anything. Neither the past nor the future exist and I live gloriously in the present here with Ataúlfo.
They spent idyllic hours gardening in El Botánico. The only cloud on the horizon was the amount that she was drinking – ‘a disgrace. I even take brandy to finish off my breakfast.’ It was an indication of the toll taken on her by the war. On Saturday, 25 February, she spent the night in Seville and got riotously drunk and danced with Ataúlfo in a nightclub until dawn. ‘It was a heavenly evening, nobody existed in the world as far as we were concerned.’ They paid the price the following morning when they set out for the long drive to Épila with the corresponding hangovers. They arrived just as the radio was announcing that Britain and France had recognised Franco. The end of the war was imminent. This elated her immensely but the shadow of a general war soon dampened spirits. It was a reflection of the Germanophile and anti-Semitic ambience of Prince Ali’s household that she could write in her diary: ‘The news from England tonight was once more all about war preparations in view of the imminent crisis. There is no crisis but as the Jews have sworn to have a European war this spring come what may, I suppose there soon will be.’115
With the war effectively over, there was little for Pip to do. Inevitably, away from the chaos of the front, her mind focused on Ataúlfo and she saw him frequently. Her pleasure in this was negated by signs that Princess Bea was starting to worry about their relationship. ‘Somehow a strange feeling seems to have crept into the atmosphere. It is impossible to explain and may be all my imagination but there have been so many tiny probings and pointed remarks and meaning looks.’116 There are various reasons why this might have been the case. If Ataúlfo was getting attached to her, that would challenge Prince Ali’s hopes for his son to marry a royal. It is more likely that Princess Bea knew instinctively that her son had no real interest in women, would never marry and perhaps wanted to avoid Pip being hurt. All this was going on while the Republican zone was disintegrating into a mini civil war between the Government and the anti-Communist forces of Colonel Casado. Her unit had been sent to Don Benito in the province of Badajoz – at the best of times, a drab town. Now, pockmarked by shells and bombs, it was without any charm. To make matters worse, she was worried that she would miss the triumphal Nationalist entry into Madrid. In the event, her time there was made pleasant by sunbathing and horse riding. It was also just about near enough for visits to the Orléanses who were now in Talavera de la Reina. Her peace of mind was briefly disturbed by news of the Germans marching into Slovakia in mid-March.117
On 22 March 1939, her unit moved to Pueblonuevo in Córdoba – ‘a filthy little dump’. She was depressed. ‘God I wish this war would stop. I am fed up to the back teeth and will go raving mad soon.’ The Nationalists were preparing for the final march on Madrid. Conditions in Pip’s new hospital were primitive. ‘It is hell having to start this war again when we all thought it was over and finished. I am sick of it and never want to work again in my life. My worst worry is my terror of there being a European war although things are temporarily quieting down.’ Pip dreaded moving from one bleak village to another although in fact the end was nigh. She was released from her unit and, after a difficult search through the frozen sierras near Ávila, she managed to rejoin Princess Bea. The Infanta was about to enter Madrid with Frentes y Hospitales and Pip became one of her staff preparing food and blankets to take into the starving city that had been besieged for two and a half years.118
On 26 March, a gigantic advance was virtually unopposed across a wide front. Franco’s forces entered an eerily silent Madrid on 27 March. When Pip heard the news, she was exultant: ‘A day no Spaniard will ever forget nor I either. It has been so unbelievable that I don’t know how to begin to describe it. At last, at last I am in Madrid, and I doubt if any other English person has entered it for the first time in their lives under similar conditions.’ On 28 March, the Infanta, with Pip and a convoy of lorries containing supplies, were into Madrid before the main Nationalist forces. They drove through the lunar landscape of the Ciudad Universitaria, the front line marked by huge fortifications and smashed buildings. As they drove slowly into the centre, starving children jumped for joy as they handed out chocolate. There were emotional scenes as right-wingers who had been in hiding since the beginning of the war staggered out into the light from the embassies and legations where they had been buried alive. Pip was distressed by the damage to the magnificent Orléans Palacio in Madrid. Much of the façade had been damaged by shell-fire. A tabor (battalion) of Moorish mercenaries had been billeted there and filled the patio with sheep, goats and bullocks. However, the upstairs apartments and most of the furniture was intact.119
On the following day, they drove northeast out of Madrid past Guadalajara to inspect Princess Bea’s estate at Castillejo. In the course of a drive of one hundred kilometres between Guadalajara and Tarancón, they saw no Nationalist troops yet passed without incident through 40,000 demoralised Republicans. ‘All along the road, some going one way, some the other, in groups of twos and threes, or tens and twelves. They all looked dead tired, pale and exhausted, but quite cheerful. Lots were limping and hardly able to walk. All carrying their rugs and packages on their backs, but no arms at all.’ The estate at Riba de Saelices which Bea had not seen since the family’s departure from Spain in April 1931 was a ruin, its miles of woodland cut down, the house turned into a stable. On her return to Madrid, Pip accompanied the Infanta on an endless round of visits to hospitals, emergency stations and canteens. The weather was cold and wet and in the aftermath of the war, most people seemed to be suffering from colds or flu. Boredom briefly set in and, like others, Pip began to ‘think of the filthy war which we loathed as “the good old days”’. Ataúlfo was similarly affected and was surly and bad-tempered with both Pip and his mother. The entire air force was depressed by the death, in an exhibition flight, of Joaquín García Morato, the Nationalists’ great air ace.
Pip was at least cheered by moving into the new quarters of the Orléans family, a magnificent house that had been the Turkish Legation. She was busy establishing the canteen at the air base of Barajas, on the Guadalajara road out of Madrid.
She wrote of her relief work with Frentes y Hospitales: ‘Always the same rows and bothers. Oh my kingdom never to see a hungry person or a tin of milk or Bovril again.’ She was suffering the common letdown of the soldier’s return to a squalid normality in a war-ravaged country. The end of hostilities meant no longer living on adrenaline. For Ataúlfo and Prince Ali and others, it meant the space to think about dead comrades. The atmosphere was not helped by the fact that there was little food. Pip was still losing weight but, unusually, not pleased by the fact. The relief work was certainly tedious – ‘I am so sick of all this fussing and bothering and wearing uniform and never doing anything amusing.’ The emergency stations provided horrendous sights and smells. Yet there was nothing to stop Pip returning to London to the glittering social life she had left behind eighteen months earlier.