Tell the Moon to Come Out Read online

  Nineteen

  The lighting in the station was poor, which from their point of view was an advantage. Some bulbs were not lit at all, others glowed weakly. In between lay pools of darkness. A smell of acrid smoke hung in the air. They followed the faceless crowd surging along the platform looking for space on the night train to Seville. At least there was a train. Most compartments were full to overflowing, but when they had walked almost the full length of the train and were beginning to despair, they found one with two empty seats.

  There was no room on the overhead racks for their bundles so they had to keep them on their knees. They had seats facing each other in the middle of the two rows. On one side of Nick sat a burly man, with a cap pulled down over his eyes, who seemed to be already asleep; on the other was an equally large woman with a basket on her knee from which was emanating the sound of a cat mewing. Nick felt squeezed between them but was pleased enough to have got on the train at all. No one was speaking.

  The time for departure came and went. One or two other would-be passengers opened the door and tried to squash into the compartment but were immediately repulsed by the cat woman shouting, ‘Full up! No room!’ She had a piercing voice, one that stood a chance of being heard at the other end of the train. Nick grinned at Isabel, who was sitting between an elderly man and a nun wearing a wide wing-shaped bonnet.

  Nick was happy to have Isabel with him. ‘Of course I’m going to come with you!’ she had said and flicked her hair back, in that decisive way she had. Eugenia had said Isabel was a girl who knew her own mind and so she was a girl after her own heart.

  They had found the parting with Eugenia and Salvador difficult. In just over twenty-four hours they had become firm friends.

  ‘We’ll see you again,’ Salvador had said. ‘When life becomes a bit easier.’

  Surely it must at some point, thought Nick, as they sat, tense, in the hot, stuffy, immobile train, waiting for something to happen. Surely people could not go on living under such conditions forever, fearing the police and the Civil Guard, fearing knocks on the door at night, worried about every step they took, every word they uttered. Salvador said wounds were much too raw yet for things to settle down. It could take a long time.

  ‘Papers, get them ready!’ a voice barked further along the corridor.

  The passengers awoke from their apathy. Their hands curled tightly round their papers, their eyes slid from side to side.

  Nick kept his eyes averted from Isabel. Exchanged looks are sometimes surmised to be guilty looks, Salvador had warned them. Nick kept his hand on the papers in his pocket, telling himself to keep cool, calm and collected – his mother’s advice whenever he had an exam at school – and to try not to sweat. Guilty people sweated, so it was said. But then so did those who were nervous and not guilty. All the passengers in the compartment had their papers ready except for Nick’s neighbour, who was snoring, with his chin dropped on to his chest.

  The door slid back and a policeman stood in the opening. Everyone, apart from Nick’s left-hand neighbour, immediately drew in their legs to give him a clear passage. The policeman rapped the sleeper on the side of the head with his knuckles.

  ‘Wake up, dunderhead!’

  The man, in his fright, almost toppled on to the floor.

  ‘All right, out you get!’

  The man, recovering his wits, and seeing the others holding their papers, spluttered, ‘But I have mine here.’

  ‘Out, I said!’ The policeman took him by the collar, whirled him round and kicked him out of the compartment. He went sprawling into the corridor.

  No one else said a word.

  ‘Right, Captain!’ The policeman signalled to someone who had been waiting in the corridor. A man in a khaki uniform came into view. ‘Come in, please, sir! I apologize that there are no first-class carriages on this train.’

  ‘I am travelling purely out of emergency,’ said the captain haughtily. ‘My staff car broke down and I have to be in Seville tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow evening, I hope, sir. I fear the train will not make it before nightfall.’

  ‘Nightfall!’ The captain snorted and pursed his lips as if considering alternatives and finding none. Then he stepped into the compartment and the rest of the passengers pulled in their knees to make room.

  ‘Move up, move up!’ commanded the policeman. ‘Let the captain have a seat by the window.’

  They shuffled along and the soldier took the evicted man’s seat after giving it a look of distaste. His knee-length mahogany-coloured boots gleamed. On his flat-crowned, peaked hat he wore three gold stars, and another three on a bar above his left pocket.

  ‘A more deserving traveller,’ said the policeman, nodding in the direction of the new arrival and defying anyone to challenge him, even by a glance. He then got round to examining their papers, which he studied with a fixed frown as if he were suspicious of each and every one of them.

  ‘Your name?’ he demanded of Isabel.

  ‘Claudia Rosso,’ she said in a calm, clear voice.

  ‘You live in Borges, I see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what is your purpose in travelling to Seville?’

  ‘I am on my way to Málaga to visit my grandparents.’

  ‘You are travelling alone?’

  ‘No, with my brother.’ Isabel indicated Nick on the other side and the policeman turned to look at him.

  When he came to the nun, he merely nodded and said, ‘God speed, Sister.’

  Nick drew in a few deep silent breaths, trying to control the rapid beating of his heart. He hoped he would be able to answer as calmly as Isabel. What would the penalty be for travelling with forged papers? Never mind having entered the country illegally! Years in prison, probably. He did not let his mind linger on that.

  Then it was his turn.

  ‘So Rinaldo Rosso, you, too, live in Borges? With your parents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see you are eighteen years old. Did you fight for our glorious leader, Franco?’

  Nick nodded. Even in his nervousness he could not help reflecting that no one in Scotland would ever use such flowery language. The army officer was looking interested and had turned in his seat to address Nick.

  ‘Where did you fight, lad?’

  ‘Teruel.’

  ‘Ah, I, too. Were you on the Heights?’

  Nick nodded again. He said, aware of the croak in his voice, ‘I was wounded there and sent home.’

  ‘Badly injured, then, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  What if they were to ask to see evidence of his wounds? Salvador had told him to say he’d suffered head injuries, concussion, internal bleeding. His injured, bandaged hand would not be sufficient for him to have been invalided out though he was deliberately sitting with it displayed on top of his pack.

  The policeman handed the papers back to Nick. He wished the army officer a good journey, then left their compartment and carried on to the next one. The captain, however, had not lost interest in Nick.

  ‘Whose command were you under? Was it General Aranda?’

  Nick gave yet another nod. It seemed the safest response.

  ‘Fine man. Fine soldier. We had the Republicans on the run, you remember, and then those blasted Internationals came in. Bloody cheek, British, French, Americans, interfering in our war. But we got back at them! We taught them a lesson finally. We estimated that we knocked off some fifteen thousand Reds in that exercise. Oh yes! Pretty good, eh?’ The officer looked round the compartment but there was no response. ‘And we must have taken around six or seven thousand prisoners. It’s what I would call a most decisive and glorious victory!’

  He went on to talk about his own glorious part in the battle, which was obviously all that he wanted to do. He was not really interested in Nick, who was required only to murmur now and then to show that he was listening. He was, in fact, listening attentively, thinking that this might be information he could use in future.


  When there was a lull in their conversation the nun struck up one with Isabel.

  ‘So you are going to visit your grandparents in Málaga, dear? That is a good thing for you to do. They’re elderly, are they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is it that they live in Málaga? I know the city a little. My sister lives there.’

  Isabel reeled off the address. The nun repeated the name of the street as if it might be familiar to her. ‘That’s near the market, isn’t it?’

  ‘Quite near,’ agreed Isabel. ‘Though it’s a while since we visited them, so I don’t really remember the city very clearly. During the war we couldn’t go, of course.’

  ‘But now we have peace, praise be to God. And God bless our dear leader.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said the captain.

  The nun was not finished yet, though, with her questions. She was in a chatty mood. Which church in Borges did Isabel’s family worship at? Where had they been christened? Isabel struggled valiantly, managing to find some kind of answer for each question. Nick wondered if there was a Church of Santa María in Borges. Or had Isabel made it up? It was a good enough bet, anyway. There must be thousands of churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Spain. The more the nun carried on the more Isabel struggled. Nick thought how true it was that when first we practise to deceive what a tangled web we weave! Wasn’t it Sir Walter Scott who had said that? He remembered his English teacher at school repeating it, relishing it, making it sound loaded, as if he suspected each and every one of them of deception and was warning them that they would not get away with it. That life seemed long ago.

  The rest of the passengers, having nothing else to do, were listening to every word that Isabel and her neighbour were exchanging. Nick thought the captain was paying too much attention to Isabel. Perhaps he was thinking she was pretty. Nick did not like that idea but it would be safer if the man were thinking that than she might be an impostor.

  The train left more than an hour and a half late, by which time everyone was dead tired and ready to sleep. It was a relief to hear the engine snorting and hissing into life and to smell the smoke. The train shuddered and lurched forwards to begin its long, tedious, jolting journey. Black smuts drifted in through the open window, but everyone tacitly agreed that it was much too hot to consider closing it.

  Nick and Isabel met each other’s eyes briefly and they gave a small nod as if to say, so far, so good, while acknowledging that it was only by the skin of their teeth that they were surviving. Nick was not sure that he wouldn’t have preferred to risk a lift in a lorry. There would always be the chance of jumping off and making an escape. Here, they were trapped. And he had noticed that the captain was carrying a pistol.

  Nick dozed intermittently, waking every now and then to see the darkness rushing past outside. Not that they were travelling fast. At times the train slowed to walking pace. The track was obviously in very poor repair, judging from the bumps and the jolts. Once or twice they thought they were about to be derailed. Only occasionally could a light be seen out in the campo. The sound of snoring and grunting within the compartment mingled with the rattle of the wheels beneath them. The cat, though, appeared to have subsided into silence. From time to time one of the passengers struggled up and, opening the door, disappeared along the corridor. When Nick himself went along, he found the toilet in a stinking state and overflowing.

  A grey dawn broke and the passengers awoke feeling overheated and in ill humour. They scratched and yawned and their sour breath filled the compartment. The captain smoked a cigar, adding to the fug. He had given up pretending not to be affected by the heat and had removed his jacket. Nick saw that he had damp half-circles under his arms like everybody else and his forehead glistened with sweat.

  They chugged on throughout the day. The minutes crawled. People dozed and grumbled. About the hardness of the seats and the slowness of the train. They finished their food and drained the last drops of water from their bottles. They ran their dry tongues over their parched lips. At intervals the train stopped altogether, as if needing a rest. Whenever it did, the passengers tumbled out to take the air and stretch their legs. The army captain stood apart, smoking yet another cigar. Walking beside the track Nick was better able to see the countryside than when travelling in the train with its small windows. The landscape had changed from the flat tableland of La Mancha, Don Quixote country, with windmills breaking the monotony every now and then, to become more undulating. As it grew dark Nick began to imagine the high sierras of Andalusia with their jagged peaks and red rocks, and the little white villages perched on high like splashes of snow, with groves of orange and lemon trees, olives, vines and avocados on the lower slopes. He could sense their smells. He could feel himself drawing closer to his father’s country, and to his father.

  They entered Seville at midnight.

  Twenty

  ‘I pray that you will find your grandparents in good health, dear,’ the nun said to Isabel as they were approaching the station. ‘I myself am travelling on to Málaga tomorrow morning. If you should need any help while you are there, come and ask for me at the Church of Los Santos Mártires. My name is Sister Encarnata.’

  The Church of the Holy Martyrs. Nick wondered how many martyrs Spain had produced during its Civil War.

  ‘You will find the church a little to the north of the market and not far from the river. Anyone will be able to tell you if you ask.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister,’ said Isabel.

  ‘I shall be staying with my sister who lives near by. Her name is Doña Rosalía Molina.’

  The passengers were up on their feet, dragging their cases from the racks. In its basket, which now stank, the cat was complaining loudly and scrabbling at the wicker.

  ‘She’s been cooped up long enough,’ said her owner.

  That was how they all felt. It had been a long slow ride and the air in the compartment had become progressively heavier and staler as the day had worn on.

  Finally the train lurched into the station and juddered to a violent stop, throwing the passengers off balance. They sprawled on top of each other and struggled to refind their feet. Nick held Isabel in his arms for a moment and for that brief passage of time they looked at each other and forgot that the rest of the passengers existed. Then they separated. Nick saw the nun giving them a strange look. But perhaps he had started to read too much into people’s glances.

  The captain brushed down his uniform with the tips of his fingers and looked displeased that he had been forced to have contact with another human being. He examined his boots, both back and front. He wrinkled his nose. The cat woman moaned.

  ‘Every bone in my body will have been broken by the time we get off this contraption,’ she declared.

  ‘Give the General a little time and our country will be transformed,’ said the captain. ‘The infrastructure suffered atrociously under the Republicans. Everything went to rack and ruin. In future, our trains will run on time.’

  That was what Italy’s Fascist dictator, Mussolini, had promised his country. Nick remembered his mother commenting on it. ‘What an idiot!’ she had said. ‘As if that is important in the scheme of things.’

  They filed out, holding back to let the officer go first. The passengers in the corridor, many of whom had spent the night and the day there, flattened themselves against the wall to let him pass. He swung himself down off the step and went striding off. Soon the other travellers were following, hurrying towards the exit.

  Sister Encarnata stopped to speak to Isabel and Nick, to tell them that trains for Málaga did not leave from this station. ‘You have to go to Cádiz Station. I am spending the night in a convent. I hope to see you in the morning.’ Then she, too, was gone.

  The station soon had emptied, the lights dimmed. Looking about for somewhere to hole up, they found a pile of old sacks and boxes heaped in a corner. They had only just crawled inside when the first of the Civil Guard patrols came past. They spent the night in
their uncomfortable hideaway, dozing intermittently, and at first light got up, feeling stiff and a little sore. The first thing Nick saw was a photograph of Franco staring out at him from a wall. He turned his eyes away.

  When they emerged into the street they realized they were close to the river.

  ‘It must be the Guadalquivir,’ said Isabel. ‘It’s strange to see something that you’ve known only as a squiggle on a map.’ She had travelled little in her country. Few people from her village had.

  They stopped a street sweeper, who told them that Cádiz Station was on the other side of the city. He pointed northwards with the bundle of sticks that served as a brush. ‘There’s no direct route. You’ll have to zigzag through the streets. You’ll pass the cathedral. You can’t miss that.’

  As they walked they soon saw that Seville showed signs of destruction just as Madrid had, with ruined houses and burnt-out churches commonplace. Even so it was obvious that it must once have been a fine city and could be again.

  They passed the cathedral with the tall bell tower alongside it. Nick recognized it and remembered going there with his father when he was small. They’d had a good day together, a happy day. They had climbed to the top of the tower and looked out over the rooftops. One day, when Seville’s ruins had been swept away, he would come and climb the tower again with his father, and maybe with Isabel.

  Sister Encarnata was already at the station and bustled up to meet them. ‘They say there should be a train to Málaga at nine o’clock. It might take a miracle for it to leave at nine!’ Her eyes twinkled.

  It was almost eleven before it appeared and like the train from Madrid it was packed from end to end. This time, though, the journey did not last as long. Three hours later, after various stops and starts, they arrived in Málaga.

  The nun fell into step beside Isabel and Nick on the platform. ‘Can I help you find your way?’

  ‘It’s all right, thank you, I think we can manage,’ said Nick, but the nun had taken Isabel’s arm and was keeping pace with them. She accompanied them out into the street.