Bones of the Buried (8 page)

‘Hester thought you would want to hole up somewhere swanky but I said that, though you were often insufferable, you didn’t like showing off in that particular way. Was I
right?’

‘In every degree,’ said Edward, pleased that Verity had regained some of the combativeness which had made life so interesting a few months back but which seemed to have been lost in
her gnawing fear that her lover would end up in front of a firing squad. In the foyer of the little hotel Edward was consigned into the care of the manager, a Napoleonic figure: rotund,
black-garbed, with magnificent moustaches, he seemed to be rather in awe of Hester and half in love with Verity. ‘Felipe,’ said Verity, ‘look after our friend. He is a genuine
English milord and don’t pretend you’ve met one before. But he’s quite decent, really.’

‘
Si, señorita,
welcome to my hotel, milor,’ the manager said, proudly displaying his grasp of English. ‘Thees is a very good place and I look after you
well.’

‘Thank you,’ Edward said, nodding his head in response to Felipe’s bowing and scraping, ‘I’m sure I will be very happy here.’

Hester looked unconvinced but managed a wintry smile. ‘We’ll come and collect you in an hour, if that’s all right. We’re going to meet some people at Chicote’s on
the Gran Vía.’

‘Chicote’s?’ queried Edward, who did not feel in the least like going out. ‘I thought of going straight to bed.’

‘Oh pooh!’ said Verity. ‘Just because you had to get up a bit earlier than usual you can’t not go out on your first night in Spain. Anyway, I’m starving.’

Verity always had had a healthy appetite, Edward remembered, and he was glad to find that she had not lost it in her present anxieties. He hesitated but did not wish to look unenterprising to
the two women who were staring at him, Verity accusingly, and Hester mockingly, a little smile playing about her lips.

‘You’re right. Of course, I would love to,’ he said.

‘That’s good,’ said Verity, sounding relieved that this English milord for whose presence she was responsible had not let her down. ‘It’s the best bar in Madrid.
Everyone who’s anyone goes there.’

It was half-past nine when Verity and Hester came to collect him. Edward was feeling better. The bath at the end of the passage, which he shared with the other guests on his
floor, was inadequate and the water tepid but still he had been able to shave and wash himself. He thought longingly of his clawed monster in his rooms in Albany. He had been uncertain what to wear
for the evening’s entertainment but the small bag Fenton had packed for him did not allow much choice. In the end, in his clean white shirt, Cherrypickers’ tie and tweed jacket, he
looked what he was: English to the core.

Hester was looking statuesque in the sort of overcoat he imagined Napoleon might have worn in his Russian campaign but of course she was twice as tall as the Emperor and wide in the shoulders.
Her hair had been tidied beneath a wide-brimmed black hat which emphasised what he could see of her face – her black eyes, Roman nose and firm chin. He thought she looked magnificent. Verity,
on the other hand, looked almost Spanish, except for the fox jacket which Edward remembered her wearing back in London. She looked a charming, innocent but determined child. Her Mediterranean
colouring helped but it was, Edward thought, the black bandanna she wore over the top of her head which made her look ‘foreign’.

‘It’s to keep my ears warm,’ she said, seeing Edward eyeing her.

‘Very attractive,’ replied Edward vaguely. He knew if he said anything more effusive she would think he was patronising her. It came to him that he always thought twice before paying
Verity a compliment. He was a little frightened of her finding him a conventional English male and he had had occasion in the past to smart from her biting retort to inanities other girls would
have professed to find delightful.

‘Well,’ said Hester, perhaps a little irritated that Edward seemed to have no eyes for her, ‘we’d better get moving. They eat late here but I’m hungry as a
stallion.’ She marched them through the swing doors into the street. There were some street lights under which their breaths smoked in the cold but for the most part they walked in pools of
darkness.

‘Hungry as a horse,’ Verity corrected. ‘Hester has some problem remembering clichés,’ she said apologetically to Edward, taking hold of his arm.

Edward thought Dr Freud might have something to say about her seeing herself as a stallion but was wise enough to keep his mouth shut. He looked at Verity intently. Whether it was tiredness or
anxiety, she was exhibiting a desperate gaiety which he knew was near to tears. ‘You’re sure you don’t want to go to bed? You have had an exhausting day,’ he said to her in
an undertone.

‘Oh, what can you mean?’ said Verity archly, gripping his arm more tightly, and again, Edward thought she wasn’t behaving normally. She obviously regretted what she had just
said because she corrected herself fiercely. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I’m too wound up. Anyway, I want you to meet our friends. They
are
our friends, aren’t they,
Hester?’

‘They have to pass for friends. Beggars can’t be rich men.’

‘She means,’ said Verity fondly, ‘that we foreigners have to stick together.’

‘You don’t mix with the Spanish, then?’ said Edward ironically.

‘As much as we can but it’s difficult. There’s a saying, foreigners in Spain should give the men tobacco and leave the women alone, but seriously, the Spanish are so taken up
with their own affairs they don’t have much time for outsiders. They want us to know what is happening – they want the outside world to help but they are not very good at getting us the
information we need. You’ve no idea how complicated Spanish politics is. Take the new Popular Front government. It’s made up of five main groupings each with its own idea of how to
govern this ungovernable country. I mean, can you imagine the communists and the socialists agreeing on anything for long and as for the Catalan Separatists . . . I ask you!’

‘It’s a ragbag of everything from anarchists to communists and they all hate each other,’ Hester agreed.

‘If there are communists in the pudding, my guess is they will rise to the top,’ said Edward mischievously.

Verity looked at him reproachfully. ‘We are good organisers and we know what we want. Is that bad?’

Edward was spared from having to answer. ‘Yup, they sure do need help,’ Hester said thoughtfully.

‘Help? Who?’ Edward asked. It was bitterly cold and he pulled his coat more closely around him as he walked.

‘Economically. The Republic is flat broke,’ Hester explained. ‘The ordinary worker here in Madrid – the janitor in our apartment building, say – earns less than a
dollar a week.’

‘Not when you take into account the riches Hester pours over his head,’ Verity said. ‘She’s always giving the family clothes and food.’

‘Oh, not really, but when little Francisco looks at me with those liquid brown eyes . . .’

‘He’s the child,’ Verity explained.

‘He’s so cute. It almost makes me want to have one of my own.’

‘Really!’ said Verity. ‘After all you said against marriage and men.’

‘I know, but we can’t be consistent – not all the time,’ Hester said, confused by Verity’s vehemence.

‘But, I say, I still don’t understand. How can Spain be broke? Look at all this.’ They were walking down the Gran Vía and the buildings on either side were larger and
smarter than in London’s Park Lane. ‘This is all so modern and . . . and fashionable . . .’

‘Yes, of course,’ Verity said squeezing his arm. ‘You wait till you see the shops in the Carrera de San Jerónimo. There are rich people here, very rich – the
ex-King’s cronies for example – but you have to go away from Madrid, into the countryside, to see the meaning of poverty. The hovels in which the peasants live are . . . well, they just
don’t bear looking at. And that’s the trouble; the dukes and marquises maybe own a castle, a palace, a house here in Madrid and another in Monte Carlo, two aeroplanes and six
Rolls-Royces. While they may have an income of 25,000 pesetas
a day
all the year round, the
braceros
– that’s the landless peasants – if they’re lucky earn two
pesetas a day for about five months of the year and nothing for the rest.’

This was the old Verity, Edward was happy to see, indignant at social injustice and angry at the indifference most well-fed men, like him, exhibited.

‘What has the Republic done then to improve things?’ he inquired.

‘They are trying to modernise. They are trying to introduce real democracy and they have renounced war . . . but they can’t do much while the army and the Church oppose
them.’

‘Yes, but what are they doing about filling the stomachs of the starving?’ said Edward drily.

‘I think this new government will do something,’ said Hester. ‘They are pledged to redistribute wealth but of course it’s not going to be easy. They want to cut the size
of the army and they are taking over education from the Church and making it open to all, paid for by the state.’

‘I can see that being unpopular in some quarters,’ Edward said.

‘Yes,’ Verity agreed, ‘and David says there are no arms, nothing to stop a military coup. In fact, that was what he was doing before he was arrested.’

‘What?’

‘Buying arms – but that’s a secret,’ she added hurriedly. ‘I don’t think David would want me to have told you.’

‘I can’t help if I don’t know the facts,’ Edward said sententiously.

‘Yes, but you have to make David tell you what he and Tilney were doing in the mountains.’

‘It’s a mighty queer place to buy arms, out in the country,’ Hester said. ‘That usually happens in offices or hotel rooms – at least, I guess so; that’s what
I’ve always imagined.’

Edward was silent; so this was what Griffiths-Jones was up to: buying arms for a bankrupt government which had renounced war. There might be a few people keen to interfere with
that
, he
thought. He shivered. ‘Damn it, I thought Madrid – Spain anyway – was supposed to be hot,’ he said. ‘When do we get to this place?’

‘We’re here,’ said Verity, pushing through big wooden doors.

Chicote’s was an oasis of warmth and light in Madrid’s freezing cold night. There was no hint here of poverty, political unrest or anything disagreeable. At a piano
in the corner by a large pot of evergreens, an effete young man in white tie and tails was employed reducing Irving Berlin’s ‘Cheek To Cheek’ to pap. Every table seemed to be
occupied. Waiters dodged between them quieting imperious commands with ‘
Si señor, momento señor
,’ which seemed to be the night-time version of
‘
mañana,
mañana
’.

‘Over here, over here!’

Edward turned in response to the clear, almost actorish tones of the English in foreign parts.

‘Maurice!’ Verity responded. ‘It’s Maurice Tate,’ she murmured to Edward. She switched on a smile and weaved her way between the tables towards the man who had
called to her, Hester and Edward following more slowly. ‘Hello, Maurice,’ she said, when they had gained their objective. ‘This is Edward Corinth who I’ve told you about.
Edward, Maurice runs the British Council here. If you aren’t careful, he’ll make you give a lecture.’

‘Sit down, you two! Lord Edward – how good to meet you at last. Verity’s been singing your praises.’ Edward shot a glance at Verity who refused to catch his eye.
‘Do you know about the British Council? It was founded a couple of years back to promote the English language and English culture throughout the world. Would you really be prepared to give a
lecture? It can be difficult finding interesting lecturers. What would you speak about?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about anything,’ said Edward, shaking Maurice’s warm, damp hand and trying to smile.

‘That doesn’t matter, does it, Maurice? I don’t suppose half the people you get on to the platform actually know what they’re talking about. Who was that man we had to
listen to the other day? Ugh!’

‘Lord Benyon is a famous economist. You mustn’t be wicked, Verity. You’ve heard of Benyon, haven’t you, Lord Edward?’

‘I’m afraid not, but then, as I say, I don’t know anything.’

Maurice Tate looked the typical English intellectual: from the
New Statesman
on the table in front of him down to his grey-flannel trousers, tweed jacket patched with leather at the
elbow, and scuffed suede shoes. His hair was thin and brushed over the top of his head in a vain attempt to disguise his bald patch. He was smoking Gitanes through a long, chewed cigarette holder
and his white hands, like the flippers of some light-starved fish, flapped foolishly as he talked. Edward imagined he must model himself on Noël Coward – he affected what he obviously
believed to be Coward’s thin, clipped way of speaking – but he more closely resembled a preparatory schoolmaster.

Edward had occasion to congratulate himself on his perspicacity when Verity added, ‘Maurice is directing
Love’s Labour’s Lost
at the Institute. He wants Hester to play
the Princess of France. I think she would be marvellous, don’t you?’

‘And you, Lord Edward, you would be perfect for Berowne.’

‘I fear I won’t be here long enough, Mr Tate.’

‘Ah no, of course, “lawful espials”,’ he said in a stage whisper.

‘Lawful what, Maurice?’ said Hester.

‘
Hamlet
,’ Edward said. ‘But I assure you, I’ve not come to spy on anyone just to try and get David out of gaol.’

Edward turned to speak to Hester but she had her back to him, talking to a very good-looking young man who was smoking, drinking and giving tongue all at the same time. Verity, catching his
glance, said, ‘Let me introduce you to the others. Tom, stop talking for a moment and say hello to Edward – Lord Edward Corinth, Tom Sutton and . . . you know, vice versa.’

The young man rose gracefully and took Edward’s hand. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Basil Thoroughgood told me to look out for you. I’m at the embassy. Terrible business about
David. Anything you want, you only have to ask.’