Page 82 of The Gathering Storm

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Polly and James had taken to going to the cinema once a week. It was Ethel who had got them into the habit. She had become very keen on the pictures, which had taken the place of table-turning in her life. The medium to whom she had been going for years had suddenly disappeared, and had subsequently been exposed in the local newspaper as a fraud. Ethel stubbornly maintained faith in her, and insisted that professional jealousy had driven her out. But she had cooled rather towards the whole idea of spiritualism. The messages from her dead husbands had become rather monotonous. There were only so many times you could hear that everything on the other side was lovely, without craving stronger meat.

She had invested so wholeheartedly in the movie world that she bought magazines and followed the lives of the stars and the directors, knew who was signed with which studio, whose wonderful new film was ‘coming soon’, whose marriage was imminent and whose was on the verge of ruin. It was all she cared to talk about; but to Polly it was a great deal better to have Hollywood chatter at every meal than have Ethel lying on a sofa all day complaining about her health.

Ethel did not like to go to the cinema alone, and the previous autumn her usual companion, Mrs Chorley, had moved away from York. Her daughter Harriet was back living at Morland Place – having done a teacher-training course at Maria Grey College in London, Harriet had been fortunate in securing a post at the Mount School – and could sometimes be persuaded to go with her, but Harriet was studious, keen on self-improvement, and would only go to serious films. So Ethel looked to the nearest alternative companion, and badgered Polly to go with her. It was only when James said he would go as well that Polly gave in, and found she rather enjoyed it. To be taken out of oneself for a few hours, transported to another world where different rules applied, was rather shamefully delightful. James, of course, being a natural hedonist, saw no shame in it.

One night they went to see Dorothy Lamour and Ray Milland in The Jungle Princess, and between the second feature and the main film there was a newsreel. It contained a report on the 9th Academy Awards ceremony which had just taken place at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. The camera was focused on the red carpet, along which the stars walked between the ranks of journalists and fans. Another limousine door opened, another glamorous woman in evening dress emerged. ‘And here’s Anthea Taylor,’ the disembodied voice explained, ‘hotly tipped for the Best Supporting Actress award for her part in Three Wishes …’

Emerging from the car behind her, a man in the stark black-and-white of evening dress. The woman, in what looked like silver lamé, long white gloves and a white fox cape, waited for him, slipped her hand through his elbow, and then hugged his arm to her as she smiled ravishingly at the camera. The man smiled too, looking pleased with himself, his hand laid over her gloved one.

‘… and supporting her,’ the voice went on, ‘is her latest companion, a new flame who seems to find the task very congenial.’

Presumably the commentator did not know who the ‘new flame’ was, or did not think him famous enough to name. But Polly knew. She didn’t see anything more of the newsreel. She was thinking, Now I know why he hasn’t been writing to me. Lennie had a new love, a famous – and beautiful – film star. Of course she couldn’t compete with that.

She dreaded having to talk to Ethel and James afterwards about it, but it seemed neither of them had recognised Lennie on the screen. Perhaps they had been concentrating, along with the commentator, on Anthea Taylor. And, of course, neither had seen Lennie for a very long time. On the way home, Ethel quarrelled with James, who had laughed all the way through The Jungle Princess, while Ethel had thought it romantic and touching. Polly concentrated on driving, and was glad for once of the conflict.

It is usually only in retrospect that a person knows he has changed. Basil was privileged – if that was the right word – to witness the process in action, as day by day layers of the old Basil were stripped away. It was very hard for him to bear being dirty. He had flattered himself that he really didn’t need much, but he had never regarded hot water and soap as a luxury. And, for a young man who had promoted anarchy, he discovered that he didn’t like disorder. Ugliness, broken and damaged things, strewn rubbish, inefficiency, wilful stupidity – they offended him. And they were all around him.

Lorries had taken his centuria up into the mountains, but there had been heavy rains and the roads further on, they were told, were impassable: they would have to march the last few miles. It was not, of course, a march – it was barely a walk. After fifteen minutes the column straggled so badly the rear of it was out of sight. The road was narrow and unpaved, and the unplanned-for passage of men and vehicles had sunk it below the level of the fields to either side, which had not been cultivated since last year’s harvest. The occasional mud-and-stone farmhouse they passed was always deserted, and they saw no animals, no cows, horses, sheep, even chickens – the militia had taken them all.

The village they arrived in at last was a collection of mean cottages, with barns and mule stables behind, huddled round a primitive church. It had the desperate, battered look that the passage of soldiers always left behind: things carelessly broken, vandalised, dirtied. In addition, some houses had obviously been bombed from the air or shelled, and had gaping roofs or part-collapsed walls, while others were pocked by rifle fire from when the village had been fought over earlier in the war. And he encountered for the first time the smell of the front line: a mixture of excrement and rotting food.

They saw animals now, but only pi-dogs and strings of mules pulling rough farm carts. The houses had no gardens, only a backyard featuring a dung heap; and there was nothing green to be seen anywhere. If there had ever been trees, they had been cut down for firewood long since, and the passage of feet and wheels had turned everything else into mud, through which they had to pick their way.

It was not only mud, however: there was no such thing as a latrine in the whole village and, as far as Basil learned, never had been. The local people, before the war, had used their dung heaps. Now the passing soldiers went wherever they happened to be. The comandante of the centuria, a Belgian mercenary, who had taken a liking to Basil and Zennor, kindly warned them to watch where they stepped: there was hardly a square foot that was unsullied. They spent days in the village before they went up to the line. The church, which had been shelled and was missing its roof, had been used so extensively as a latrine that it was useless for any other purpose; the fields on either side of the road and every abandoned building likewise. The first time Basil had to relieve himself in the stinking stubble, another layer was stripped away from his old self. He tried once to imagine himself in Gloria’s bed in her pink and scented boudoir, and it seemed like a fantasy scene from a Hollywood movie, nothing to do with him at all.

It was Bob Zennor who got him through it: he never complained, took the filth and the privations so much in his stride that Basil felt compelled to match him in stoicism. He took out his frustration on his notebooks, writing up graphic details every night, in tiny writing to save space, because obviously there would be no replacing his notebooks until they got back to a city like Barcelona, and he had no idea when that would be.

The front line, they learned, was about three miles away, obviously quiet at present as there was no sound of shelling and no wounded being brought back. There was nothing to do in the village but sit and smoke. So it was a moment of diversion, even excitement, when on the second day half a dozen Fascist deserters were brought in. They were not ideological Fascists, but conscripts who had been doing their national service when the war broke out, and had no desire to fight. They had taken the chance of a quiet period to slip across to the Communist line and surrender.

The comandante allowed everyone to go in batches and look at them, and in a state of festering boredom Basil and Zennor did not refuse their turn. The enemy turned out to be very like themselves, skinny young men, unshaven and rough-haired, indistinguishable from their own side except that they had khaki uniforms, and were more ragged, with boots falling to pieces. They were being held in an abandoned cottage by the armed Communists, who had brought them down from the front line. One of them was clearly terrified, and shook like a horse, his eyes white and rolling, probably believing that the Reds were feral beasts who intended to torture and kill him. Food was brought to them, and being faced with a pannikin of stew, the lad – who appeared to be no more than fifteen – did not seem to know what to do with it. His guard stroked his shoulder and made crooning noises as he would to a horse, and finally took the spoon, wrapped the boy’s fingers around it, and dug it into the steaming mess. Once he started eating, the boy shovelled with desperate haste. The guard grinned at Basil, patted the boy again with a proprietorial air, and said in Spanish, ‘You see, the Fascist troops are always starving. That’s why they’re no match for us.’

On the third day, a covered mule cart arrived with the rifles for the centuria. They were unloaded at one of the larger barns, and the men gathered there to have them handed out. Basil and Zennor examined what they had been allocated, and Basil exclaimed, ‘What in God’s name is this?’ It was a German Mauser, and the date stamped under the manufacturer’s name was 1896. It was rusty – the bolt so rusted it wouldn’t move – and the stock had a split you could put a pencil into. Zennor’s was no better. He looked down inside the barrel and said, ‘It’s completely corroded inside. It will never fire.’ The other rifles were as bad. The boy next to him was turning his round and round and staring at it in bafflement, and Basil could see at a glance that if he ever managed to load and fire it, it would explode and take his hand off.

‘What are we supposed to do with these?’ Basil said, his voice high with frustration.

‘Look,’ Zennor said. Two young lads had just come back with something obviously newer and less rusty, and were nudging each other and grinning in self-congratulation. They were two of the youngest in the company, only fourteen, and from the way they were holding their prize rifles obviously had no idea how to use them. Zennor asked them for a look, and they showed him reluctantly, without actually letting go. They were dated 1926, and though dirty, were intact and not rusty. ‘I’m going to talk to the sergeant,’ Zennor said, in a determined voice Basil had never heard before. ‘Obviously the best rifles ought to be given to people who can shoot. That’s only common sense.’

Before Basil could say anything, he was pushing his way through the throng and was addressing the sergeant. Basil could not hear what was said, but saw the sergeant’s face redden, saw the fury on it as he bawled at Zennor, and made a furious gesture of dismissal.

He came back, not chastened, but quietly angry. ‘He said you and I are foreigners, and the best rifles go to the good Communists, those most loyal to the cause.’

‘But that’s …’ Basil was lost for words.

‘I know. And how could those little beasts ever have done anything for the Party?’

Later they learned that one of the lads, Manuel, was the sergeant’s nephew, and the other, Mateo, always known as Rubio for his fair hair, was his best friend at school. But there was no time now to worry about it. After five minutes’ instruction on how to load the rifle, they were told to get their packs and form up. Then, without further warning, they set off for the front line. Basil felt only relief at leaving the stinking village behind. Fear of death had not managed to find room in his head yet, though he was anxious about his useless, rusty rifle.

‘Don’t worry,’ Zennor said calmly. ‘We’ll have the good ones off them when we get to the front. Rubio will do anything for chocolate, and Manuel is a blockhead and does whatever Rubio says.’

‘But what about the sergeant? He’ll make us give them back, and punish us.’

‘He won’t. The sergeant will do anything for cigarettes,’ Zennor said. Basil could only admire his confidence and resourcefulness. Back in London he had thought him rather pathetic, like the swotty boy in specs at school who was always bullied, but before Basil’s very eyes he was turning into a hero and a solid, grown-up man. Basil could only hope he would do as well.

It was wild country, a chain of bare rocky hills that supported no growth but low scrub, with outcrops of limestone sticking through the thin earth like bones. The sides were steep and ribbed with rock, slashed with deep ravines. There was no possibility here of a continuous front – rather, there was a series of fortified posts perched on the hilltops wherever the ground was flat enough, facing across the ravines the similar posts of the enemy.

‘They must be five or six hundred yards away,’ Basil said to Zennor, observing the faint line of a parapet, like a scrawl along the hillside, over which a red-and-yellow flag flew, and behind which tiny figures moved in ant-like occupations.