A Forbidden Love. Kerry Postle

were about to receive. He smiled at Maria, gave her a knowing nod. She smiled back, behind her eyes a look that said I’m ready although she had no idea for what.

      Maria’s father waited, head in hands.

      Maria and Richard glanced at each other. Their excitement tinged with the first signs of fear.

      Then the great General began. He spoke of ‘my triumph, my heroism’. He was not just a man, he was ‘an emissary sent by God to save Seville … to save Spain … to save Western civilisation.’

      Maria sniggered. Richard arched his eyebrows.

      ‘Pacification’ was coming their way, the shrill voice promised over the radio waves, and, he assured them it would be ‘brutal.’

      Maria’s father pushed his fingers against his skull, a need to reach into his own mind and stop this madman with a microphone from sullying everything good within but the excited, angry little voice continued. It threw up fervour, passion, bloodlust. Talked of God and country. Threatened punishment. Promised annihilation.

      The harsh voice blasted out of the radio and shrieked in their ears.

      Maria shivered. Richard felt a chill. Alvaro got up, unable to bear it. He turned the radio off.

      ‘Can’t we hear the rest?’ she asked, strangely drawn into the darkness of de Llano’s vile world. Richard nodded to show that he too needed to listen. Alvaro turned the radio back on and walked out. He’d heard enough over the past days and no longer had the stomach for tales of squealing Red women with kicking legs. He didn’t want his daughter to know about them either. But war was always evil, ugly. And she had a right to know how evil and ugly it was becoming.

      The young pair sat and listened. When the broadcast had finished neither of them said a word, did not even exchange a glance because they could not bear to look at one another. Maria’s body had lost its youthful, hopeful tingle of only minutes before; Richard felt sickened at the memory of his. De Llano had banished them from paradise.

      The English boy got up and left the house. It was perfectly understandable that he should go out and get some air.