result was a fever for the taste, touch and smell of the other that shocked them both. Merely walking beside Florence, close enough for her scent to reach him, was enough to make him ravenous for her. What was more, and this he had never experienced before – even with sweet, giving Eileen – Florence seemed to feel the same: her desire was equal to his.
And so, while the political skies over Barcelona began to darken, and as the welcoming faces of their Barcelona hosts turned to distracted anxiety, James and Florence focused on the deadly serious business of falling in love.
Only when they heard about the broadcast of a coded message – ‘Over all of Spain, the sky is clear,’ was the plotters’ signal to each other over the radio – did they understand that a coup d’état was underway, fascists and nationalists bent on overthrowing the republican government that had invited the flower of international radical youth to Barcelona, to thumb its nose at the Nazis on parade in Berlin.
Suddenly the notion of sprints, heats and semi-finals seemed horribly irrelevant. Even those who thought the coup would be rapidly put down, who did not imagine the country was about to plunge into a vicious civil war, could see that this was no time for a pretend Olympics. When the rumour spread through the Hotel Olímpico that the games had been cancelled, few waited for confirmation.
James was packing his bag when Harry, his skin fire-engine red, found him. He had, James saw instantly, sobered up fast.
‘Where are you going, Zennor?’
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard. The Games have been—’
‘Cancelled, I know. But where are you off to?’
‘Well, I thought … if there are no Games. That is, I was going to ask Fl—’
‘You’re not proposing to leave, are you? In the republic’s hour of need?’
James scanned Harry’s face. He seemed entirely in earnest. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘A few of us are staying on. To defend the republic.’
‘But … but, you’re not a soldier.’
‘I can train. The point is, Zennor, we’ve been enlisted, whether we like it or not.’
‘Enlisted?’
‘History is enlisting us.’
James stopped stock-still, holding the lid of his suitcase. It was quite true that, since the day he had arrived, he had understood that something much larger than a sports tournament was at stake. He knew it was easy to romanticize a gathering of fit and handsome young people coming together in the sunshine in a noble cause – but it was not just romance. Barcelona with its People’s Olympiad had become the focus of international opposition to Adolf Hitler and his nasty so-called Third Reich. It was here that the world had said no, taking a stand not only against the Berlin games but against the entire Nazi project. And so an attack on the republic led by ultra-nationalist army officers and backed by fascist thugs was not solely a domestic matter for Spain. It was an attack by fascism itself. There would be a new fault-line now, running through Spain, yes, but dividing all of Europe. Hitler and Mussolini would doubtless be on one side of that line and those who believed in democracy and free speech and all the promise that the twentieth century held in store would be on the other. James Zennor found that he was asking himself a question: whose side are you on?
He snapped his suitcase shut and went to find Florence.
James had to fight a throng of athletes flooding out of the Hotel Olímpico lobby, stampeding for the railway station, to reach her. He was bewildered to find her standing outside, bags already in hand.
‘I was just coming to see you,’ she said. She bit her lip in a way that instantly resolved him not to say what he had planned to say.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to Berlin.’
‘Berlin?’
‘If I leave now, I can make it.’
‘Berlin? Why the hell would you be going there?’
‘It’s not how it looks, James. You have to trust me.’
‘But, what about—’ he gestured at the crowd shoving and pushing around them, at the banners and the bunting.
‘I know, but I have—’
‘All that talk about the “wicked Nazis” and how the Olympics will be just a “glorified Nuremberg rally”. That was all rubbish, wasn’t it? You meant none of it!’
‘That’s not fair.’
That cloud that he had once seen pass across her face so briefly was lodged directly above her now, darkening her eyes. The light within seemed to be faltering. But he could not stop. ‘“I refuse to play any part in it”. That’s what you said. Just talk, wasn’t it? Cheap talk.’
‘How dare you talk to me like that?’ She was glaring. ‘This is beneath you, James. And it’s certainly beneath me.’
‘Listen—’
‘No, you listen. I don’t know what kind of women you’ve been with before me but this one’ – her index finger tapped her breastbone – ‘makes up her own mind, OK? I will not be told what to do by any man. Not by my father and certainly not by you. You can decide to do whatever you like. But this is my decision. I’ve realized I need to make my point in my own way.’ She paused. ‘Besides, I haven’t done all this training for nothing.’
‘Oh, so that’s it, is it? You don’t want your precious training to be in vain? You want the glory of a bloody medal!’
‘No, that’s not it,’ she said in a low voice, her eyes not meeting his. She was briefly knocked off balance by a group of women hurrying to cross the road and board a bus. ‘I have to leave. I’m sorry.’
He reached out and grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to turn back to face him. ‘And what about this? Us.’ The word tasted awkward in his mouth; he instantly regretted it. ‘You and me. Has this meant nothing to you?’
She tilted her head to one side in an expression he didn’t quite know how to read. Was it pity? Regret? He wondered if he could see tears in her eyes.
‘You don’t understand at all, do you? All that “experimental psychology” and you don’t understand a thing.’
And with that, she broke free of him and disappeared into the swell of people clamouring to get out.
James stood for a while, letting the crowd shift around him, like a stream around a pebble. He could not quite believe what had happened, how quickly he had let her go. How quickly he had pushed her away, more like. What a fool, sounding off like that to a woman he had known for, what, a week? And this was not any woman. You might be able to tell an Eileen, or even a Daisy, what to do – some women positively seemed to like being bossed around. But not Florence. That much should have been obvious. She was independent, strong-willed, with a mind of her own: it partly explained why he was falling in love with her. To have attempted to control such a woman – a brilliant, beautiful woman, who could have
