not a Communist,’ Tom said.
‘Then it is you who is serving on the wrong side.’ Delgado smoked ruminatively and precisely. ‘There are a lot of misguided men fighting for the Republicans. Good officers in the Fifth Regiment, like Lister and Modesto and El Campesino, of course. When he was only 16 he blew up four Civil Guards. Then he fought in Morocco – on both sides! Would you consider flying for us, Señor Canfield?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Tom said.
‘I rarely joke,’ Delgado said. ‘I see no point to it. But I’m glad you’re staying loyal to the side you mistakenly chose to fight for.’ He dropped his cigarette on the floor, squashing it with the heel of one elegant boot. ‘Now all that remains is to decide the method of execution.’
Spray broke over the prow of HMS Esk as it knifed its way through the swell on its approach to Marseilles but Martine Ruiz, standing on the deck with her five-year-old daughter, Marisa, didn’t seem to notice it as it brushed her face and trickled in tears down her cheeks.
What concerned her was the future that lay ahead through the spume and the greyness for herself, Marisa and her three-day-old baby. How could she settle in England?
What would she do without Antonio? Why did he have to fight when all that had been necessary was to slip away to some Fascist-held city such as Seville or Granada in the south or Salamanca or Burgos in the north and lie low until Madrid was captured? She wished dearly that Antonio was here beside her so that she could scold him.
She stumbled across the lurching deck and went below. Her breasts hurt and her womb ached with emptiness.
The baby was as she had left it in a makeshift cot, a drawer padded with pillows; Able Seaman Thomas Emlyn Jones was also as she had left him, sitting beside the drawer on the bunk reading a copy of a magazine called Razzle.
He hastily folded the magazine and placed it on the bunk beneath his cap.
‘Not a sound,’ he said. ‘Not a dicky bird.’ He stared at his big, furry hands. ‘I was wondering … How are you going to get to England?’
‘Train,’ she said. ‘Then ferry.’
‘Lumbering cattle trucks, those ferries. You mind she isn’t sick,’ pointing to the sleeping baby.
Martine glanced at herself in the mirror. There were shadows under her eyes and her face was drained.
‘It is me who will be sick.’ She spoke English slowly and with care.
‘And me,’ Marisa said. She lay on the bunk and closed her eyes.
‘You’d be surprised how many sailors are sea-sick,’ Taffy Jones said.
Martine, who was becoming queazy, stared curiously at his chapel-dark features. ‘What part of England do you come from?’ she asked.
‘England is it?’ His reaction was unexpected and, she suspected, ungrammatical.
She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Aren’t you English?’
‘Is the Pope a Protestant? I come from Wales, girl, and don’t you ever forget it.’
Now she understood. He was just like a Basque, she thought. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s me that should be sorry, bloody fool that I am.’ He looked at his hands, clenching them and unclenching them, and then he looked at the baby. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘when you get to England … Do you have anywhere to go?’
‘A relative,’ thinking of her brother Pierre who worked in the Credit Lyonnais in London.
‘Ah, not too bad then.’ He adjusted the pillow behind the baby’s head. ‘But just in case this relative of yours is too distant, if you’re ever stuck … You know, if you don’t have anywhere to go you could always come and see us in Wales.’ He handed her a lined sheet of paper. ‘There’s the address, just in case.’ He stood up awkwardly.
Martine took the scrap of paper. ‘Thank you Monsieur Jones.’
‘Taffy.’
‘Monsieur Taffy. And now,’ she said, as the baby stirred and prepared its face to cry, ‘I must feed her.’
Taffy Jones picked up his cap and his copy of Razzle. ‘What are you going to call her?’ he said. ‘I meant to ask you.’
‘Isabel.’
‘Can she have another name?’
‘As many as she wants,’ Martine said.
‘My name’s Thomas. I thought maybe Thomasina might be a good name. How does it sound in Spanish?’
‘It sounds like Tomasina,’ Martine said. ‘And now if you’ll excuse me.’
Isabel Tomasina began to whimper and at first the sounds were so small that to Taffy Jones they sounded like the lonely cries of the seagulls wheeling overhead.
It was dawn – the classic time for executions. Tom Canfield and Adam Fleming walked under armed guard. Behind them were Delgado and the young captain.
Mist lay in the valley but here in a field of vines the air was clean and still night-smelling. A squadron of Capronis flew high above Pingarrón.
Adam glanced at Canfield. He looked thoughtful, that was all, thoughtful and, with his fair hair and lazily dangerous face, very American, convinced that he would be welcome anywhere in the world and if not he would want to know the reason why.
Not any more, Tom Canfield, we are going to die, you and I. For what? For bringing our contradictory ideals to a foreign land?
He stumbled over a fiercely pruned vine. He looked back. The vines squatted in the wet earth like a graveyard of crosses.
There is no future. Life is an entity, not a sequence. It is mine and when it is severed there will be no life for anyone because it is I who see and hear. No life for you, Colonel Delgado, slicing the enemy bristles from your cheeks with a cut-throat razor; no promotion for you, Captain, so handy with your long-barrelled pistol, certainly no life for you, Tom Canfield, who dropped into my life just 12 hours ago.
They approached a ruined farmhouse. A whitewashed wall was still standing and there were blood stains and the pock marks of bullets on it.
Adam Fleming opened his mouth and screamed but no sound issued from his lips.
Canfield said, ‘Excuse me, Colonel, may I ask you a question?’
Delgado switched irritably with his cane at a clump of nettles. ‘What is it?’
‘Will you grant a last request?’
‘What is it?’
‘Don’t shoot me.’
‘You have a sense of humour,’ Delgado said. ‘Why else would you be fighting for Republicans?’
Adam noticed
