Olura (12 page)

The next day showed that indeed we were. Elena, who had taken a motherly and adoring interest in Olura’s affairs while under her roof, suddenly started to greet us with a face of such
courage and agony that she reminded me of a seventeenth-century image of Our Lady of Sorrows. Likely enough, she imitated just that look; for all of us, especially Latins, need a model for the
expression of our emotions. When I caught her weeping in the kitchen, she was pregnant with mystery and refused to explain. It was obvious that she had been ordered to report our every movement.
Naturally enough, the manner in which I was treated by the smoothly trained management of the Hostal, on the rare occasions when I was in, revealed absolutely nothing.

I did not like the forty-eight hours’ silence of the police. Gonzalez ought to have been along with apologies. I felt that a file was growing in Madrid or Bilbao, and had a presentiment of
scruffy individuals who had shaved yesterday slipping reports and telegrams on to the desks of hard-faced officers shaved and powdered that very morning. Spanish justice is quite as fair as any
other when the State is not involved. But wasn’t it? There seemed to be nasty political undertones behind the death of Livetti.

At last we made up our minds to escape, abandoning the car and our baggage so that it would be assumed—with luck, until the evening—that we were only out for the day. Olura
didn’t mind. She said that Elena and her husband could not be dishonest if they tried and that she would get back all her things when we were cleared of suspicion. I have always understood
that the rich were jealous of their possessions. She was not. She felt as strongly as any Bohemian that possessions were a nuisance and a tie.

Since the police did not know that trait of her character, there was a chance that our names and descriptions had been given only to the road posts, and not to Railway Control at Irun; in any
case I hoped to find, once on the spot, a discreet way round the passport officers. What with the crowded tramway from Irun over the bridge to France, Basque porters and a sum of money as a favour
from one gentleman to another, it should not be by any means hopeless.

Nobody interfered with our long mornings on the beaches and up the river, and we knew only too well three little paradises surrounded by high banks of sand where we could not be watched. One of
them gave access, still in dead ground, to a low cliff on top of which was scrub and woodland. Once there, we could vanish into Vizcaya so long as we kept off the roads.

Our best bet was to reach Deva where we would be inconspicuous among the assortment of foreign tourists and could safely take a taxi to Irun; but it meant a walk of some fifteen miles across
country. We dared not use local buses or any of the local railway stations.

We set off at our regular time next morning, which was August 4th, carrying nothing but towels, passports and money and appearing to be dressed as usual. For Olura that was easy, since the red
cloak was familiar to everyone, and she could wear what she liked underneath it; for me, it was not; but I managed to conceal a heavy sweater under shirt and scarf.

The tide was very low. Two crossings of the sandy canyon of the river enabled us to reach the walls of a ruined cottage and its surrounding bramble bushes. There we buried the towels and the red
cloak, over which—for I could not part with it so brutally—I conducted a short and romantic service.

Through the woods we easily reached the slope of the coastal range along which was cut the corniche road to Deva. The engineers had given it an easier passage than ours. We had to climb up and
down the tangled ravines which the road crossed by bridges or a hairpin bend running far inland. I thought it too risky to sit by the roadside and thumb a lift. The traffic police on their
motorcycles and the Civil Guard would give more than a casual glance at two carworthy and conspicuous English, if only to ask us whether we had had an accident.

Weary at last of scrambling along the side of the range, we toiled up to the watershed. There on the top were farms, farm tracks and men and their wives at work in the little fields, with whom
we exchanged greetings, for there was no point in avoiding them. We were right off the beat of anyone likely to report our presence.

Olura, with a blister on her heel, was dead tired and disappointed with herself. When I had talked of fifteen miles across country, she was sure of her endurance, remembering that she could
gaily outlast her dropping contemporaries on Aldermaston marches and other flat-footed protests—if you analyse them—against the normal working of democracy. She knew that our course
would be up and down hill, following whatever paths there were, but she visualised turf or pine needles, not long stretches of eroded rock.

When at last we stopped by a spring on the edge of the southern slope, and ate such bits and pieces as we had managed to secrete from our overfilled plates at dinner the night before, I found it
hard to persuade her to her feet again. Deva was only five or six more miles away, and we had to hurry if we were to be over the Bidasoa, the frontier river, by nightfall. But her thoughts were
Lord knows where. Across the valley and over the rising ridges the pyramid of Mount Gorbea showed faintly green through the mists shimmering on its flanks. To the east the sullen, colourless line
of the Pyrenees was producing its usual miracle play of the Wrath of Jehovah with cumulus cloud, streaked showers, lightning and sudden shafts of sunlight revealing the precipices.

It is my guess that whenever she felt that circumstance had utterly overcome her, she had acquired a habit of recalling and taking refuge in all those worthy causes which needed her and to which
she was devoted. In such a mood a companion who could only worry about police and geography was far away from the point. She sat up with her arms round her knees and exclaimed that all this was
lovely and marvellous, and what did men want to destroy it for?

The Bidasoa beckoned inexorably. I hope my tone was not one of impatience. I replied that it was not man who wanted to destroy the earth, but the earth which had to limit the pullulating mass of
man, and would undoubtedly reduce us by half either through our overgrown intelligence and its nuclear physics or through our decreasing resistance to disease. For myself I was more alarmed by the
efficiency of Spanish police, which I could do something about, than by nature’s beta factor, which I couldn’t.

‘And that is what you see for our children? Ours?’ she asked.

The devastating honesty of Olura! She made any mention of marriage wholly irrelevant, almost indecent. It was a statement of her intention.

I saw that she was nearly at the end of her strength and longing to be assured that she was loved. So easy. Far too easy. There is a kind of masochism in me—perhaps in all males of my
type—which firmly suppresses all the responses which matter for the sake of immediate present effort. It should not have been beyond her understanding, for she herself was a masochist in a
wider field of action and willing to drive herself slap into the grave for an ideal; but she could not be inspired to blind effort for the sake of her own personal safety.

So I gave way, and we dropped downhill over turf, smooth and easy as that of English downland, to a ribbon of road which was reflecting the late afternoon sun. Feminine gods were determined to
prove her right. We had not been on the verge of the road more than a minute when a country bus came along, bound for Azpetia. It was going in the wrong direction, south-east instead of north, but
at least she could rest. Meanwhile we were miles from anywhere that the wildest guess of the police could place us. At Azpetia was another bus about to start for Tolosa, and from Tolosa we took the
last train to San Sebastian.

This remote and casual travel had wasted a lot of time. We were too late for expresses to Bordeaux or Paris and could only get over into France by local trams or trains in the small hours of the
morning. Too risky, I thought. We should stand out as suspicious travellers among a horde of workmen.

In San Sebastian, however, we were just two of thousands of foreign tourists, and it was most unlikely that we should be spotted. We had a midnight dinner, and then—as we dared not
register at a hotel—went on to a night club. In my scruffy state the management was doubtful about letting me in, but decided that Olura was rich and entitled to her pick-ups. After walking
most of the day in a simple frock which, to my eyes, could have been bought off the peg anywhere for a couple of guineas, she still gave that impression. In spite of the heel she now wanted to
dance. It was the first time that we had danced together.

The place closed at five and left us high and dry with nothing else open. The only safe course was to wander along the beach. A few impecunious students were sleeping there, not very privately.
The bay of San Sebastian was so packed during daylight and left so full of sun shelters and other movable property during the night that it was patrolled by municipal watchmen. We were asked what
we were doing but left to sit or walk in peace when I explained that we had just come through from France, that our car was parked on the esplanade and that we were waiting for breakfast.

We got some eventually in a large café, where at nine o’clock there was already a safe sprinkling of businessmen and tourists. Next door a motor coach company was advertising a day
return trip to Biarritz and Pau. It seemed a safer and easier way out of Spain than hanging about railway stations, for it was inconceivable that the whole coach load would have to show their
passports at the frontier; it would be enough if they were shown the clerk when buying tickets. In that I was right; but either through tiredness or plain ignorance I underestimated the police. I
never guessed that we were so important that even in this wretched little office there would be a damned agent behind the frosted glass alongside the ticket clerk.

After a minute’s delay I was told that the coach was full, and that there would be another in half an hour if we didn’t mind waiting. As I had bought the tickets, we waited. An hour
later I went from the café to the coach office to see what was happening. The clerk said that the second coach had unfortunately broken down and the garage was rushing repairs. How well and
smoothly they play the mañana! I noticed that there was no indignant crowd waiting for this second coach, but still I was not suspicious. It was possible that everyone else knew what was
happening.

After another hour and a half, during which we drank too many sherries and Olura lectured me on my wildly idealistic view of Spanish efficiency, Gonzalez walked into the café. He
said—before we could say it ourselves—that it was very natural for two distinguished foreigners to want a night out in San Sebastian. If only we had let him know beforehand, it could
have been arranged. But now he had to ask us to return to our respective hotels where, he believed, we had kept on our rooms.

A car was waiting. With a gesture which quietly ensured compliance he placed himself between us on the back seat, but did not attempt to question us. The driver sat well into his corner with his
right ear, as it were, extended backwards. Olura, like a desperate hostess, at least gave him something to listen to. She discussed with Gonzalez the cabaret we had visited and the number of
English decanted from coaches into San Sebastian. I cleared my throat and tried to be comradely in Spanish. My remarks seemed to echo round the car before he replied to them.

When we dropped Olura at Maya, I started to accompany her into the inn. Gonzalez would have none of it. As I was about to protest, the driver left his seat and placed himself unobtrusively
alongside me. There was no doubt what he was: a straight criminal detective without any of the airs and graces which fitted Gonzalez for his high-up security jobs. I waved to Olura as cheerfully as
I could and got back into the car.

We drove up the valley and over the steel bridge at the top of the tide water, then turned down a track used by builders’ lorries loading sand. I felt a little anxious at this move, but it
was easily explained. No police stations for me yet. I could be too influential. So, short of putting me through it in my own hotel room, a car parked among sandhills was a fair solution.

With Olura out of the way, Gonzalez at once and surprisingly returned to his usual manner.

‘I am sorry, Don Felipe,’ he said, ‘but my instructions are that you are not permitted to speak to Miss Manoli.’

‘Which of us is supposed to be the guilty party?’

‘Both of you.’

‘You don’t really think that Miss Manoli killed this Livetti of yours?’

‘Did you?’

I won’t say I was not afraid of him; but the right game for the moment seemed to be to play on our liking for each other and to refuse to take any suspicions seriously.

‘You had much better put your money on me,’ I said. ‘If you choose Miss Manoli, you’ll only stir up the journalists. Think of the headlines! Franco’s Police Arrest
Red Heiress. And then that moving article by Mary Deighton-Flagg: Is No Holiday-Maker Safe In Spain?’

‘It is not the time for wit, Don Felipe.’

‘Fact, not wit, my dear teniente! Remember what a lot of foreign exchange was lost the last time police interfered with a British tourist!’

‘If an uncivilised son of a whore walks down the main street of Barcelona with only a comic hat and a pair of bum bags on,’ replied Gonzalez with furious dignity, ‘we naturally
arrest him whether he is a Trade Union official or not. You would do the same to any Spaniard in Piccadilly Circus.’

‘Of course we would. And if he was a socialist, Miss Manoli would probably pay his fine. But publicity is publicity!’

He was silent, and I began to feel that I might soon be let loose as an incorrigible and harmless rogue. His companion in the front seat, however, took out a notebook and began to scribble away
in shorthand as a firm hint that we should get to the point. He had a general air of dead-pan distrust. I don’t suppose that the regular criminal investigation branch much cared for the
intrusion of a secret agent into what was, on the face of it, a straight case of murder.