Tell the Moon to Come Out Read online

Another wait, but this time he definitely heard someone moving on the other side of the door. A bolt rattled, and then the door was opened. A man with longish, wild black hair stood on the threshold, keeping hold of the door’s edge. He stared at Nick for a few seconds before coming to life and opening his arms to embrace him.

  ‘I can see that you are the son of Sebastián! You look like him. We fought together, your father and I. You are most welcome, Nicolás! Your father spoke of you, often. Come in, please.’

  It was dark inside. They went into a low, almost bare room. A single sputtering candle sent strange shadows over the walls. Lighting a second one, Francisco set it on a wooden table.

  ‘Sit down, lad. You need food, I think?’

  ‘If you can spare any.’

  ‘What I have I will happily share with you.’

  From a wall cupboard Francisco produced a half-loaf of greyish bread, a hunk of yellow cheese, a jug of water and a flagon of red wine. He sat down opposite Nick. In the candlelight Nick saw the long puckered scar that snaked from beneath his chin down his neck, before disappearing under his coarse blue shirt. Francisco, seeing him looking, ran his finger down the scar.

  ‘Someone wanted to cut my throat!’ He laughed. ‘But they did not succeed. If they had I would not be sitting here at this table with you. So, come on, eat, please!’ He poured equal measures of wine and water into a mug and passed it across the table. ‘And drink! You look drained.’

  Nick drank. Even with the added water the wine tasted rough, but it felt good to his parched throat and without it the dry bread and hard cheese would have been difficult to swallow.

  ‘You speak Spanish like a native, Nicolás.’

  ‘I grew up bilingual.’

  ‘You look like one of us! You’ve been in Spain before?’

  ‘The south only. Andalusia. Where my father’s parents live. We visited them a few times. Before 1936.’

  ‘Ah, before 1936. The eighteenth of July. The day our lives changed. When General Franco decided to stage a revolution.’

  ‘So you fought with my father?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘Is he –’ Nick hesitated, almost not daring to put his question, so afraid was he of the answer. ‘Do you know if he is still alive?’

  Francisco shook his head. ‘I don’t, Nicolás. The last time I saw him was at the battle of Jarama. But I heard later that he had been at Teruel. Another bloody battle. All battles are bloody! Never be persuaded otherwise. A friend of mine was at Teruel with Sebastián.’

  ‘This friend – does he live near by?’

  ‘No, many kilometres away from here.’

  ‘Can you give me his address?’

  ‘So you’ve come to look for your father, is that it? You do realize how dangerous that is going to be, don’t you? No, you probably don’t. How could you?’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  ‘It’s not a case of being careful. For a start, you won’t know who you can trust and who you can’t.’

  ‘I must go.’

  Francisco sighed. ‘I presume you have no identity papers?’

  ‘Jean-Luc said you might know someone who could help with that?’

  ‘This same friend might, if the Civil Guard hasn’t taken him. But now I think you need to sleep?’

  Nick did not deny it. Francisco took him into an adjoining room and showed him a pallet of straw. Nick unrolled his bedroll and placed it on top. Then he dropped down on to it and slept.

  He dreamt that he was still up on the mountain and that the two wild dogs were sitting on a crag above him, looking down. He saw their red eyes, their yellow teeth. He heard their low, throaty growls. And then they were upon him, trying to tear his flesh to pieces, as he had seen them do to their prey.

  ‘It’s all right, lad,’ said Francisco.

  Nick jerked upright, wondering where he was. Francisco was squatting on the floor beside him. He patted his shoulder.

  ‘You were having a nightmare. That’s nothing. We all have those. Now go back to sleep and think how the world looks in the early morning when everything is clean and fresh and unmarked.’

  Nick slept again and this time he did not dream or, if he did, he remembered nothing. He slept throughout that day and the night that followed and woke to find another fresh dawn. By then he was ready to press on again.

  Three

  Nick reached the village as dusk was falling. Francisco had thought it better that he travel by day; at night it might seem suspicious if he were to be seen on the roads. Wherever possible he had cut across meadows and through woods, avoiding the highways where the trucks of the army and the Civil Guard were much in evidence. On one occasion, crossing from one field into another, he had had to scale a high, barbed-wire fence and had snagged his hand, tearing a lump of skin out of the palm. He had wrapped a handkerchief round it and it had stopped bleeding, though it was still painful.

  He stopped at the entrance to the village and waited in the shadows. He was learning to wait and listen, not to rush on. He could hear Jean-Luc’s voice in his head: You never know when a guard might be round the corner. Keep that thought in mind all the time.

  After a moment, Nick began to move again, glad that the light was fading. It was much darker within the narrow streets of the village than it had been out in the open fields. There were no street lamps, though a half-moon gave some light. He saw that a number of the terraced houses had been wrecked, shelled probably during the war. The rubble lay uncleared. Something scuttled across his path. A rat, he thought.

  The village was spread out in a long straggly line with one main street – Calle Real, Royal Street – and a number of shorter ones running off it. Francisco had drawn a plan for him before he left and he had fixed it in his head. No paper must be found on him if he were caught. Any information he gave could mean arrest, possibly death, for anyone who helped him.

  Water was trickling down the middle of the street. He swerved round a small child playing in it with a tin can. The child did not even glance up at him. A little further on a low bridge spanned a stream, or a burn, as they would have called it back home. On the bridge two girls were filling jugs with water from a fountain. They did look at him. They stared but said nothing. He passed on by, keeping his eyes averted. The only other person abroad was an elderly man walking his dog.

  Halfway down the street Nick came upon the sign he was looking for: Calle de la Iglesia. Church Street. And there on the corner, gleaming in the pale light, was the small white church that had given the street its name. The walls were pock-marked, he saw, when he went up closer. He put his fingers in the holes. Bullet holes. He knew the Republicans had attacked churches, seeing the priests as their enemies, friends of Franco. Bad things happened on both sides, Jean-Luc had said.

  Nick turned into the street. His contact lived at number four. The houses here were also terraced, and one-storeyed. A light showed through a gap in the shutters at number four. He went up to the door and rapped on it, giving three short knocks and two longer ones. He stood back. Would anyone come? To the left of the door he saw the window shutter twitch slightly and an eye peer out, but only for a second, before withdrawing. He shivered, feeling the cool breeze that had sprung up, replacing the heat of the day.

  And then the door opened. Confronting him was a heavily built woman, of around middle-age, with a black apron tied about her middle. He took a step back. She was not eyeing him in a friendly way. Her eyes narrowed as she surveyed him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m looking for Ricardo,’ Nick said nervously.

  ‘Ricardo?’

  ‘Does he live here?’

  ‘Eduardo,’ the woman called over her shoulder. ‘Someone is looking for Ricardo!’ She said it as if it were a joke.

  Nick’s instincts told him that something was seriously wrong. Without waiting for Eduardo to appear he fled, back up to the Calle Real. As he reached it someone stepped out from the shadows and put a hand on his arm.


  ‘You were looking for Ricardo? Come with me. Quickly!’

  It was the elderly man with the small dog. He stepped briskly out in front of Nick, who followed, not knowing what else he could do. The man stopped at a house further along the street, opened the door, swiftly ushered Nick inside, and immediately threw the bolt. They were in a narrow unlit hall. The man stood motionless, listening. They heard shouting, and then footsteps went by the door, but none stopped.

  When it was quiet Nick’s host touched his sleeve and indicated that he should go with him. They went to the back of the house and into a kitchen. There, the man lit an oil-lamp and closed the shutters. They were in a sparsely furnished, stone-flagged room with a wide chimney. Burnt-out logs lay in the grate. Nick could now see his rescuer properly for the first time. He had a face a bit like a walnut, stained brown and criss-crossed with wrinkles. It was the face of a man who had spent most of his life out of doors.

  ‘Are you Ricardo?’ asked Nick.

  The man shook his head. ‘How do you know of him?’

  ‘Francisco the pig man gave me his address. Do you know where I can find him? Ricardo?’

  ‘He lies in a field outside the village.’

  ‘A field?’

  ‘Yes, Ricardo is dead, I’m afraid. Executed, along there by the bridge.’

  ‘No!’ Francisco had said that Ricardo was a kind man with a great sense of humour.

  ‘His body was allowed to topple over into the stream and lie in the water for two days before another friend and myself took it away in the middle of the night and buried it.’

  ‘But that is terrible!’

  ‘Much is terrible in my country.’

  ‘So, who are the people in Ricardo’s house?’

  ‘The man is the leader of the Nationalists in the village. He fired the shot that killed Ricardo so he claimed his house. It was better than his own. The Nationalists are still greedy for blood. They are not content to have won the war, they want revenge. They roam about in gangs looking for Republican sympathizers.’

  Nick’s knees felt weak and he had to sit down. Moving through this country was like picking one’s way through a minefield and each story he heard was more horrific than the last.

  ‘And who are you?’ the man asked.

  ‘My name is Nicolás Torres. I am the son of Sebastián Torres.’

  The man’s eyes flickered.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘No, but I have heard of him, through my friend Ricardo. He came from Scotland to fight for us, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he did. So Ricardo was your friend?’

  ‘We were part of the same network of contacts.’

  ‘You helped people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I need help.’

  ‘Then tell me what I can do for you. My name is Vicente and I give you my word that you can trust me.’ The man looked Nick straight in the eye and held out his hand. Nick took it.

  He told Vicente his story, saying finally, ‘So you see, I need papers.’

  ‘You do, indeed, need them. The guards are stopping people regularly. But I’m sorry, Nicolás, I can’t help you with that. I wish I could, but I have no idea how to forge papers!’ Vicente threw up his hands. ‘Ricardo was the man for that. I can give you shelter for the night and some food and drink – what I have, at least.’

  He brought out a heel of bread, a small piece of cheese, an onion and some large plump tomatoes. ‘I have a little allotment. It keeps me from starving. We’re fortunate, we can grow vegetables. And my goat out the back gives me milk. It’s bad in the towns, I hear. Nearly everything is rationed. People are starving. They can buy on the black market, if they have the money.’

  While they were eating Vicente noticed the blood-stained rag round Nick’s hand and insisted afterwards on taking a look at it. He frowned, not liking what he saw. ‘It looks like it’s going septic. A barbed-wire wound is not good, especially with animals around.’

  He fetched a pail of water from the yard and poured some into a tin basin. There was no running water in the village. They drew what they needed for washing from two wells on the outskirts and their drinking water came from the fountain.

  Vicente cleansed the wound as best he could with a sliver of soap, after which he dabbed it with white spirit while Nick held the wrist fast with his other hand in an effort to reduce the pain. Soap, too, was scarce, said Vicente, and because of that diseases were spreading. Men returning wounded from the battlefield were bringing germs back with them. Vicente had just finished when there came a knocking on the front door.

  ‘Quickly,’ he said to Nick, ‘you must go into the stable.’ He opened the back door and propelled Nick towards a broken-down shed across the yard. ‘You’ll find some straw there. Hide in that.’

  An overpowering stench hit Nick as he opened the stable door. In the dim light he made out a donkey and a goat. He remembered the smell of goat from villages visited with his father when he was younger, before the war. The donkey looked at him but appeared not to be perturbed by this sudden intrusion and the goat paid him no attention at all. In the corner lay a heap of straw. Nick dived into it, pulling the prickly strands on top of himself.

  Not long afterwards he heard the back door opening and Vicente’s voice saying, ‘I tell you, I have seen no stranger in the village tonight.’

  ‘You were out, though, earlier, with your dog, weren’t you? Two girls on the bridge saw you. They saw this man too, quite clearly. Tall, carrying a knapsack and a bedroll. My wife confirms all that. She says he was quite young. He was looking for Ricardo.’ The last sentence was loaded with meaning.

  ‘He must have passed along the street before me,’ said Vicente.

  Nick burrowed deeper into the straw. His heart felt as if it were turning somersaults inside his chest. What if they found him and arrested Vicente and took him to the bridge and shot him?

  ‘We’ll just take a look, anyway.’

  Boots scraped in the yard. The door of the stable was tugged open and the beam of a torch stabbed the darkness. The donkey brayed and pawed the ground.

  ‘There are only the animals here, as you can see,’ said Vicente.

  ‘He’s somewhere, this young man, that is certain. He has not vanished up into the sky.’

  ‘He may have left the village by now.’

  The light swept from side to side, and was then withdrawn. The men went back into the house. It was quiet again in the stable, except for the sound of an animal chewing.

  Nick stayed in his hiding place until Vicente returned to report that the coast was clear.

  ‘I must go, Vicente, or I’ll get you into trouble.’

  ‘You need sleep. Stay for the night. You can leave in the early morning before the village is awake.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. I will give you the address of someone else further south you can call on for help. You have your bedroll? You’ll have to sleep here, though, I’m afraid, Nicolás, with the animals for company. In case they come back.’

  Nick unrolled his blanket and settled down in the straw, thinking he would never sleep in this stuffy, stinking shed with the animals shuffling around him. But he did. He was learning, among so many other things, to sleep anywhere.

  Four

  Vicente woke Nick before it was light. ‘Better to get on your way before the sun is up.’

  Nick washed in the yard from the tin basin. When he had rinsed his face with cold water he felt himself coming to life again. He had been deep in sleep when Vicente shook his shoulder. Even after washing he could smell the animals on his hands and arms. It was a pungent smell that would linger for a long time.

  On the the kitchen table Vicente had set out a bowl of goat’s milk, a piece of bread and a thin slice of cheese. Nick did not feel hungry but ate since he would need as much energy as he could muster for the next leg of the journey. He had a vision of the map of Spain in his head. It was a huge country, several times bigger tha
n Scotland. He had estimated that he would have to cover well over a thousand kilometres if he were to go as far as the Andalusian coast where his grandparents lived. Or, perhaps, used to live. Since the war had started he had not known if they were alive or dead. There had been no word from them.

  ‘Let me see your hand,’ said Vicente. Nick held it out, palm up. Vicente made a face. ‘Doesn’t look too good to me. Try not to get more dirt in it. Perhaps Julio will be able to get you some antiseptic.’

  Julio was the next name on Nick’s list. He had been mentioned, too, by Francisco, and by Jean-Luc.

  ‘Julio always manages to get money.’ Vicente grinned. ‘I am sure he will know how to get papers. He is known as “The Fixer”.’

  The thought cheered Nick. A fixer was what he needed. If he had papers he might at least have a chance to get past the guards, should they stop him, though the very idea of being questioned by them was terrifying.

  After he’d eaten, he shook his blanket free and rolled it up. Vicente filled his water-bottle and insisted on giving him some bread and cheese to take with him. Nick thanked him and hoisted his knapsack and bedroll on to his back.

  ‘Buena suerte, Nicolás!’ said Vicente. Good luck.

  Nick walked quietly along the Calle Real, resisting the desire to break into a run and put the village behind him as fast as he could. Not every house would hold a potential enemy but the trouble was not knowing who would be for him and who against him. Vicente had said the village had been fairly evenly divided during the war, but now the Nationalists dominated. Nothing was moving in the street, except for the steady trickle of water down the middle. The shutters were all closed up tight; the villagers appeared still to be in their beds and sleeping.

  And then a shutter was thrown with a whack, back against the wall, two doors along. The sudden noise startled Nick. Someone was up! With a noise like that he imagined half the village would now be awake. He shrank back into a doorway and waited for a moment, but hearing no other sound he ducked low, and keeping his head beneath window level, passed the house without anyone shouting after him. He broke into a jog. He was nearing the end of the street, could see the last of the houses coming up. A cock crowed in someone’s yard. Close by, a dog barked. The cock crowed again. Then a dog, on the opposite side of the street, began to join in.