Winter in Madrid

Tolhurst frowned at her as though she was someone stupid who couldn’t understand what was important. Harry felt a weight of disappointment settle on top of the dull heavy grief. He had thought Tolly might help them somehow, speak for them. But what could he have done?’

Tolhurst’s head jerked round as the telephone on his desk rang. He picked it up. ‘Right,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘The captain and the ambassador are here. I’ll have to brief them.’ He got up and left.

Barbara looked at Harry. ‘I want to see Bernie,’ she said flatly. He noticed there was a smear of blood on her glasses.

‘That doctor seemed to know what he was doing.’

‘I want to see him.’

Harry felt sudden anger. Why had she survived while Sofia was dead? It was strange, they should be comforting each other, but he felt only this terrible anger. When he had knelt over Sofia, her blank eyes had been half open and her mouth too, showing a glimpse of her white teeth that she had clenched as the life was ripped out of her. He blinked, trying to clear the picture from his mind. They sat in silence. They seemed to wait a very long time. Occasionally they heard sharp voices and footsteps outside. The whining noise began again in his bad ear.

Voices sounded in the corridor. He heard Hillgarth’s deep tones and the ambassador’s shrill jabber. Harry tensed as the door opened. Hillgarth was in a suit and looked as fresh as ever, black hair slicked back, the large brown eyes keen. Hoare was a mess, his suit pulled on untidily, eyes red and his wispy white hair standing on end. He glanced furiously at Harry, then blenched at the sight of Barbara covered with blood. He sat behind Tolhurst’s desk, Tolhurst and Hillgarth on either side of him. The little room seemed very crowded.

Hillgarth looked at Barbara. ‘Are you injured?’ he asked, surprisingly gently.

‘No, I’m all right. Please, how’s Bernie?’

Hillgarth didn’t reply. He turned slowly to Harry. ‘Brett, Simon says your fiancée’s dead.’

‘Yes, sir. The civiles shot her with a machine gun.’

‘I’m very sorry. But you’ve betrayed us. Why did you do this?’

‘They shot her with a machine gun,’ Harry repeated. ‘She broke the law. You have to keep people in order.’

Hoare leaned forward, his face a mask of outraged fury. ‘And they want you too, Brett, for murder!’ He turned and pointed at Barbara. ‘And you!’ She blinked at him in surprise. The ambassador’s voice rose. ‘I’ve phoned one of our friends in the government. They know all about it, that civil came back to the glade and found a bloodbath. His superiors went to El Pardo. They’ve had to wake the Generalísimo! Hell!’ he shouted. ‘I should let them have the pair of you, letı them put you up against a wall and shoot you!’ His voice trembled. ‘A government minister shot dead!’

‘It was the man Piper who did that,’ Hillgarth said quietly. ‘They don’t really want Brett and Miss Clare, Sam, Franco doesn’t want a major diplomatic incident now. Think about it, they could have picked them up on the way but they let them come here.’

Hoare turned back to Harry, a tic in his cheek making one eye blink spasmodically. ‘I could have you charged with treason, young man, I could have you sent home to jail!’ He ran a hand though his hair. ‘I should have been Viceroy of India, Winston all but promised me! I should have been Viceroy, not dealing with this madness, this rubbish, these fools! This is a fine thing for this new man on the Madrid desk in London – what’s his name—’

‘Philby,’ Hillgarth said. ‘Kim Philby.’

‘A fine thing for Philby to have to deal with! And Winston will blame me!’

‘All right, Sam,’ Hillgarth said soothingly.

‘It is not all right!’

Barbara asked in a quiet voice, ‘Please, can you tell me how Bernie is? Please. This is his blood, we brought him from Cuenca, please tell me.’

Hoare made an impatient gesture. ‘The doctor’s having him removed to hospital, he needs a blood transfusion. Let’s hope they’ve got the equipment, I’m damned if I’m sending him to a private clinic. If he comes through he may not be able to use his left leg again, nerve damage or something.’ The ambassador frowned at her. ‘And if he doesn’t make it, so far as I’m concerned it’d be good riddance! A major diplomatic incident over a bloody Red terrorist! At least we don’t have to worry about the other one, the Spanish woman they killed.’

Barbara jerked back in her chair, as though struck. A momentary look of satisfaction crossed the ambassador’s face and that did something final to Harry, all the pain and grief and anger welled up in him and he cried out and launched himself across the room at Hoare and fixed his hands round the ambassador’s scrawny neck. Squeezing that dry skin, feeling the tendons give under his grip, filled him with a tremendous sense of release. Hoare’s face reddened and his mouth opened. Harry could see right down the throat of His Brita

Then he heard Barbara cry ‘Look out!’ and felt a terrific blow on his neck. It stu

Harry felt dizzy. His legs buckled. As he fell to the floor he caught a strange expression on Hillgarth’s face, something almost admiring. Perhaps he thinks it’s all an adventure, Harry thought, just before he blacked out.

Epilogue

Croydon, May 1947

THE SCHOOL WAS in a leafy suburb of mock-Tudor houses. Barbara walked from the station down a succession of tree-lined streets, through the spring sunshine. The briefcase with her papers for the meeting was slung over her shoulder. The stockbroker belt, she thought. Even here there were scars: bombsites overgrown with grass and weeds.

She heard the school before she saw it, a cacophony of boyish voices growing stronger. She walked along the side of a high brick wall until she came to a gateway with a big sign outside, the name Haverstock School in black letters under a coat of arms. In the asphalt playground in front of the imposing Victorian building, dozens of boys were talking, ru

She walked through the throng to the main door. The boys ignored her; she had to step aside to avoid a game of football that came a little too close. ‘Give us the ball, Chivers,’ someone called. They all had upper-class accents, drawing out their vowels. Barbara wondered what they were like to teach. In a far corner a fight was going on, two boys rolling over and punching each other while a crowd egged them on. She averted her eyes.

She stepped into a wide oak-beamed entrance hall with a stage at one end. It was empty; everyone seemed to be outside enjoying the sun. It was a grand setting, very different to the narrow painted corridors of her old grammar school, although the faint pervasive tang of disinfectant was the same. A new war memorial had been put up on one side of the stage, the brass shining, the inscription 1939–45 above a list of names. The list was shorter than that on the 1914–18 memorial on the other side; but long enough.

Harry had told her the way to his classroom in his letter. She found the corridor and followed the numbered doors until she came to 14A. She could see him through a window, sitting at his desk marking papers. She knocked and went in.