The Gate of the Sun. Derek Lambert

      ‘You. What did they buy you with, Diego?’

      ‘We are all fighting for the same cause.’

      ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

      ‘I have been promised a high office in the administration when the war is over.’

      ‘And a grand house and a decent salary?’

      ‘Commensurate with my office,’ Diego said.

      ‘Perhaps,’ Ana said, ‘they will pay you in roubles.’

      ‘I tell you, we are all fighting for the same cause.’

      It was then that Ana realized that one contestant had been missing from the conversation – the enemy, the Fascists.

      Has it come to this? she asked herself. She strode out of the bar and down the street to the cinema where her children were watching the Marx Brothers.

      On the Jarama front the fighting had stopped for the night. The combatants had retired to debate how best to kill each other in the morning and, except for the intermittent explosions of shells fired to keep the enemy awake, the battlefield was quiet.

      In a concrete bunker captured from the Republicans Colonel Carlos Delgado considered the two foreigners interfering in his war. A picture of Franco hung from the wall recently vacated by Stalin; a map of the Jarama valley and its environs, crayoned with blue and red arrows, was spread across the desk.

      Delgado’s fingers searched his freshly-shaven cheeks for any errant bristles, tidied the greying hair above his ears where his cap had rested. His khaki-green tunic was freshly pressed and his belt shone warmly like dark amber. His voice, like Franco’s, was high-pitched.

      ‘So why,’ he asked in English, ‘were two mercenaries fighting on opposite sides sharing a shell-hole?’

      ‘I guess you could call it force of circumstances,’ Tom Canfield said.

      ‘It does neither of you any credit. What is your name?’ he asked Canfield.

      ‘You’ve got it there in front of you. José Espinosa.’

      ‘Your real name: non-intervention is a stale joke.’

      ‘Okay, what the hell – Thomas Canfield.’

      ‘Why are you fighting for the rabble, Señor Canfield?’

      ‘Name, rank and number. Nothing more. Isn’t that right, Colonel?’

      The glossy captain pulled his long-barrelled pistol from its holster. ‘Answer the colonel,’ he said.

      ‘You don’t have a rank or number,’ Delgado said.

      ‘José Espinosa does.’

      ‘Are you Jewish?’

      ‘Espinosa, José, pilot, 3805.’

      ‘This isn’t a movie, Señor Canfield. Please enlighten me: I cannot understand – really I can’t – why any reasonable man should want to fight for a ragged army of peasants and city hooligans whose sport is burning churches and murdering anyone industrious enough to have earned more money than them.’

      ‘Then you don’t understand very much, Colonel.’

      ‘Anti-Hitler? Anti-Mussolini? Anti-Fascist?’

      ‘Anti-gangster,’ Tom said.

      ‘So we have one anti-Fascist.’ Delgado turned to Adam Fleming who was standing, legs apart, hands clasped behind his back, beside Canfield. ‘And one anti-Communist. Do you both find Spain an agreeable location to indulge your politics?’

      ‘Your politics, sir,’ Adam said.

      ‘Nice climate,’ Tom said.

      Delgado lit an English cigarette, a Senior Service. ‘You, I presume,’ he said to Canfield, ‘were trying to find your way back to the Republican lines.’

      ‘Wherever those are,’ Tom said.

      ‘And you,’ to Fleming, ‘were hiding from an unexploded shell?’

      ‘I got lost,’ Adam said.

      ‘Perhaps we should provide foreign mercenaries with compasses as well as rifles.’

      ‘Good idea,’ Tom said. ‘They might find the right side to fight for.’

      The captain prodded him in the back with the barrel of his pistol.

      Delgado blew a jet of smoke across the bunker. It billowed in the light of the hurricane lamps.

      ‘So what shall I do with the two of you? One American fighting for the enemy, one Englishman displaying cowardice in the face of the enemy …’

      ‘That’s a lie,’ Adam said.

      ‘He was concussed,’ Tom said.

      ‘Your loyalty is touching. But loyalty to what, an anti-Communist?’

      ‘I’m 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