Olura (8 page)

While we were settling down at our table, it had been parked in the darkness of a narrow lane which ran along the side of the café—an effective choice for jumping out hard on our
tail wherever we went. I could not see if anyone was actually seated in the car, for I had no wish to show too open an interest, and still less to explore the shadows and doorways far down the
lane. It looked as if boldness had paid off and the Lord, without any complicated miracles, had delivered the two into my hands—or rather Echeverría’s, if he was in.

He was. He greeted me as an old friend and suggested a game of billiards with the local worthies. He wanted to put his Basque-speaking Englishman on exhibition. I explained regretfully that I
hadn’t even time for a cup, that my adventures of the previous night had ended in astonishing success and that I now had the cabaret singer under my wing. Unfortunately we were being followed
closely by her … I nearly said husband, but remembered in time the extreme respectability of the middle-class Basque. So I made it impressario, leaving him with a gallant impression that
Olura’s beauty and talent were being exploited by dirty foreigners in San Sebastian.

Would he, I asked, come to the café in half an hour in order to drive her, together with a black gentleman and a plain-clothes cop, to the Hostal de las Olas? I was about to romanticise
my coloured friend when he interrupted me to ask if it was not Mr Mgwana. He not only knew from the local grape-vine that Mgwana was staying at the Hostal, but quite a lot about his career. Like so
many Basques, he was surprisingly well informed through the small, sound provincial papers.

I had not time to fit Mgwana into the story. If I had foreseen Echeverría’s knowledge. I could have told him something closer to the truth. But it didn’t matter. When I went
on to ask him to park in the lane and break down there, he was eager to help.

The excuse had to be better than a puncture, for the two men were likely to start pushing him out of the lane the moment he looked like settling down there. Wheel? Clutch? No, he shouted
jovially, no, he could do better than that. It was the lousy garage, run by an incompetent bunch of coons from Barcelona. He told me at length what he thought of them; they had wrecked his
hand-brake. He had given up taking it to them. He had discovered that a hearty sideways kick at the base of the lever invariably released it when jammed. It would, he thought, do excellently for
our purpose. The more excited helpers tried to pull the lever out of the floor boards, the worse it would stick.

All this took a long time. I had to control my impatience and keep on assuring myself that Lieutenant Gonzalez, with all the police of Amorebieta at his disposal, could deal with any unexpected
emergency. When at last I returned to the café, Olura was picking at the first course and looking a little set and pale. I could see no reason for it. Her car was in full view, and none of
the crowd of customers in the café was paying any attention to us. There was an obvious foreigner leaning on the bar who had not been there when I left—a powerful chap with a large,
round face wrinkled and tanned by sun, and a colourless mop of hair on top of it. He was very noticeable, for that type of parched complexion usually goes with thin features.

After we had chatted a while in English and cautiously indicated to Mgwana that I might leave at any moment, Olura and I switched to French, which she spoke very fluently, in order to bring
Gonzalez into the conversation. I told him that the Minister and Mlle Manoli were feeling tired and would return to the hotel after dinner; they would take a taxi as they had promised to lend me
the car. This weak story was made even weaker by Olura instantly denying that she was tired and announcing that she would go with me. There was nothing that I could do about it.

Echeverría passed the window and reversed into the lane. I saw the man of the open spaces quickly pay for his drink and go out. He had at once spotted the possible traffic problem, though
I doubt if he realised that it was deliberately planned.

There was no time to bother about what an experienced policeman would make of our erratic movements. I got up, leaving Mgwana to pay for the meal, patted Gonzalez cheerfully on the shoulder and
bolted. A glance down the lane showed me that Echeverría was playing the obstinate and angry taxi-driver to perfection. I recognised Vigny by his uninhibited gestures. Echeverría was
on the pavement, solidly detaching himself from his hand-brake. He was probably telling the two that they could try to take it off if they liked, but that he would hold them legally responsible for
any damage. He had little facility for expressing himself with his hands and an almost English contempt for so volatile a practice.

Olura was already in the driving seat. I told her to make for Bilbao. It was the road which our followers would probably choose as soon as they forced a way past the taxi, but on so good a
surface we could reach the western suburbs and be lost beyond finding before they had a chance of overtaking us.

‘Why did you take so long?’ she asked.

‘There was a lot to arrange.’

‘You might have warned me.’

‘I couldn’t.’

She replied coldly that Gonzalez must have known we were up to something, that she liked to drive her car herself and that she would not be treated as a sort of helpless Andromeda.

‘You’d look very well in the part.’

‘Does it ever stop raining in this damned Basque country of yours?’

A thoroughly bad-tempered remark, but I picked up the association. A cold and wet Andromeda. And Perseus tactless enough to want to kiss the drops off? However, it was hardly the moment to
develop red-hot fantasies of the male imagination, even it they had rather more charm than usual.

‘If you want to take risks, it’s O.K. with me,’ I said, as she got herself boxed in behind a truckload of gravel.

‘With that in the boot?’

But she passed the lorry on a blind bend with her horn screaming in the best Spanish manner. I did not have to ask her to do it again, for we could now swing left up the valley of the Nervion
towards Valmaseda. Of all the turnings we could have taken it was a hundred to one against the black Seat choosing that one.

I must now give you some local colour if you are not to suppose that my plan was crazy and unworkable. Iron, I imagine, only begins to interest you after it has reached the smelter or the blast
furnace. Here it is part of our life and landscape. Between the limestone of the Cantabrian Mountains and the sea, where the colours of Vizcaya change from misty greens and white to emerald and
maroon, the ore can be quarried almost anywhere. The only problem is to transport it to the market at an economic price in spite of the steep, broken country of the coastal range.

In the busy industrial valley of the Nervion the ore comes down by aerial cableways, much like ski-lifts, to the foundries and the quays. To the east, as far as the boundary between Vizcaya and
Santandér, any little estuary with deep water or any promontory beneath which a coaster can ride at anchor in calm weather serves as the terminal of a cableway. A chute is built out from the
cliffs, themselves of iron, and the ore goes roaring into the hold forty or fifty feet below. Why it does not go slap through the bottom of the ship I have never understood.

The quarries carve away the hills, leaving a skyline of fantastic mounds and pinnacles above the distorted quadrilateral of a ravine, which, as the cut deepens, may become a massive shaft with a
squared entrance big enough to hold a house. When the workings are abandoned because of landslide or flood, these ravines, their brown sides melancholy with sparse scrub and weeds, their floors an
untidy maze of puddles, tips and rusty trolley lines, suggest a Wellsian picture of vanished civilisation whose last survivors took refuge in the dark tunnel, grand and sinister as the main gate to
the pit of hell.

It was in one of these deserted galleries which always held a black pool of stagnant water at the end of the cut, that I proposed to sink our puppet. I knew it well, for there were pre-Roman
workings in the hillside above the shaft. That had been the limit of my interest. I did not know if there was any night watchman—it seemed unlikely—or how near one could approach the
quarry by car without arousing curiosity in the scattered miners’ cottages.

Now free of all pursuit, Olura and I drove at leisure up and down hill as country roads led us from one little valley to another. There, among the roots of the mountains, where foreign tourists
might well lose their way but could hardly be engaged in any illegalities, we were safe from inquisitive policemen. I won’t say that we felt it. Each lonely figure we passed was a potential
danger.

We crossed the main Santandér road outside Somorrostro, and headed down to the coast through the driving spatter of a Biscay squall which, while it lasts, is aggressive as a slap on the
face. When we came to the iron company’s road, leading to the old workings and the active quarry, known as the Garay Cut, alongside them, I asked Olura to stop on a hard-rolled patch of
gravel under the oaks while I explored on foot. I assured her—since she seemed touchy on the point—that I should not be more than half an hour.

It was soon obvious that the car could not safely go any farther. A little way down the road on the right was a row of three or four cottages. Lights were out, but that was no guarantee that
everyone was sleeping soundly. Two hundred yards on was the entrance to the Garay Cut. There was a light in the gatehouse and some activity around the crushing plant where coke was being shifted
from a dump to the boilers.

The track which had once led down into the ravine of the old workings left the road well short of the gatehouse and ended at a tip. I slid down the steep slope in an avalanche of iron dust and
gravel, and waited to see if the whoosh had attracted attention. Nothing happened. The sound might have been common enough in heavy rain.

At the bottom of the ravine I followed the old working face which I knew would lead me to the shaft. It was like walking the length of some vast derelict ship from the open stern to the
cavernous forecastle. I could not go wrong so long as I used my flashlight to avoid tripping over rocks and rusted ironmongery.

When at last I entered that loathsome tunnel, I found it eerie and difficult to endure. But hard necessity is a remarkable cure for superstitious shiverings. The pool was not far from the
entrance, coiling its dead surface back into the darkness and silence of that dripping hell-hole as far as the beam of my torch would carry. I should guess that there might already be a corpse or
two rotting under the motionless water. Those places must have been well known to executioners of both sides during the Spanish Civil War.

Just outside the shaft, on what one might call the starboard bow of the empty derelict, was the tumbled mass of the landslide which had finally made the workings unsafe. The years certainly
hadn’t made it any safer. I could see—for the cloud cover racing past the half moon was now wispy—the black cracks in the overhanging hill.

The debris of the landslip promised a route to the top. Rain had eroded the loose earth and gravel, and the rivulets now pouring down from puddle to puddle of orange scum had cut out between the
larger rocks a slippery but practical zig-zag. I was all in favour of trying it, for I doubted whether I could ever climb out of the ravine over the loose ore down which I had come.

The upper part of the slope turned out to be a rubbish tip, domestic and industrial. It was criss-crossed by tiny tracks—probably made by sheep or children, though I wouldn’t have
allowed either there myself—and easily climbed. At the top I found myself close to the fence of the new quarry. I could watch the night shift working around the power plant under the naked
lights swinging in the wind.

Decision, right or wrong, was forced upon me by an abandoned wheelbarrow. It was lying upside down at the top of the rubbish tip, its bottom rusted through except for two bars. I was still
determined that Olura must not be allowed to help me with the puppet. Yet if she did not, it would be a slow and exhausting job. The wheelbarrow at least offered an easy method of getting him as
far as the tip.

I righted the barrow and began cautiously to push it along the lip of the ravine. I couldn’t possibly be seen. To the men on the other side of the fence it would be blackest night outside
the pool of high lamps. But, by God, I could be heard! Unless the wheel was kept dead straight it squealed like a wounded hare. I muffled it with a bit of sacking and my coat, and left the rest to
the wind. Every loose fence-slat and notice board was creaking, forming a faint, shrill background noise for the shovellings and wheelings of the quarrymen.

There was no rhyme or reason in the tracks, since they had all been made originally to serve purposes which no longer existed. I should have been hopelessly lost if the lights behind me had not
given a sense of direction. Near the main gate of the Garay Cut I chose a footpath at random. It turned out to be most convenient, passing through the woods, avoiding the cottages and entering the
road nearly opposite the point where we had parked the car.

Olura was out of it, and on the edge of the trees. I think she believed the muted squeals to be proceeding from some defenceless animal and was preparing to interfere with nature. Heaven knows
what I looked like, soaked, covered with red mud and pushing that sinister wheelbarrow. She did not think it humorous when I remarked that I entered pursued by a bear.

I turned the barrow upside down and anointed the axle with the car’s dipstilk until it was reasonably silent. I did not much want to come to the point. Livetti had been twenty-four hours
in the closed boot. I told Olura that there was not the least point in getting wet and that the job was now simple. Her answer to that was to unlock the boot and take Livetti’s heels.

My pushing of the wheelbarrow may have been a little impetuous. That was understandable under the circumstances. With Olura following close behind, I took my cargo through the woods and then out
along the edge of the ravine to the rubbish tip. My eyes were now used to the darkness, and I could make out the former tracks of the wheel. It was risky to flash a torch so close to the new
workings, and unnecessary.