Tell the Moon to Come Out Read online

  The girl opened the black wrought-iron gate, led Nick up the path and rang the bell. The door was opened by a small plump woman in a brown dress and white apron.

  ‘Isabel!’ she cried, her eyes transfixed by the sight of Nick.

  ‘Marina, is the doctor at home?’

  ‘He is. Come in!’

  Between them, Marina and Isabel helped Nick up the step and into the vestibule.

  ‘What is it, Marina?’ asked a voice from further up the hall.

  ‘Doctor, Isabel has brought a young man. He looks in a bad way.’

  They took Nick into a small white room and laid him on a bed. What a relief to lie down! He let his eyes close. Overhead a fan whirled madly in an effort to cool the air.

  ‘He’s injured his hand,’ said Isabel.

  Nick felt firm fingers encircle the wrist of his burning hand. He heard disjointed words floating around his head which he could not quite comprehend.

  Nasty… don’t like the look… seen lots like this… in the war… blood-poisoning… risk of gangrene… have to cauterize… Marina, brandy… aspirin…

  Someone held his head and he felt a glass clink against his teeth.

  ‘Drink,’ said Marina. ‘This will help dull the pain.’

  The liquid stung his throat and made him gasp, but he let it trickle away down his throat.

  ‘A bit more,’ urged Marina. ‘Drink as much as you can. And swallow this little pill.’

  He swallowed and drank.

  ‘That should do now, Marina,’ said the doctor. ‘Fetch some cold wet cloths for his forehead, please. We need to try to lower his temperature. Isabel, do you think you could hold his wrist while I work on his hand?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good, good. You would make an excellent nurse. Or doctor! I’ve told you that before, haven’t I? Now, grip his wrist as tightly as you can while I work.’

  After the first excruciating shaft of pain which seemed to consume his entire being, Nick lost consciousness.

  When he surfaced some time later the pain was still there, and no less fierce, though it felt different in a way he could not have defined.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  He opened his eyes to see Marina bending over him. The light in the room was grey except in a corner where a small lamp burnt on a table.

  ‘Is it evening?’ he asked, his voice emerging as a croak.

  ‘It is. You’ve been sleeping for some hours.’

  Marina helped him to drink some water and swallow another pill, then she lifted a towel and dried his forehead. He realized that his clothes were sticking to his body.

  ‘That’s what you need to do, sweat out the fever. That’s what will cure you. I’m going to help you put on this nice clean nightshirt and then I’ll wash and dry your clothes for you.’

  It was an agony to undress and allow the loose white shirt to be eased over his head. Each movement was an effort and he had to bite his lip to stop himself from crying out. Marina supported him, saying, ‘Nearly finished. You’re doing very well. Good lad, good lad.’

  He lay back exhausted and let his eyes roam round the room.

  ‘Isabel has gone home,’ said Marina, as if reading his thoughts.

  ‘She lives near by?’

  ‘At the other end of the village.’

  He must thank her. She had saved his life. ‘She’ll come back?’

  ‘I expect so, in the morning. She will want to know how you are doing. But what you must do now is sleep, recover your energy.’

  He nodded, closed his eyes again. Marina pulled up a sheet and tucked it under his chin, reminding him of how his mother used to do it when he was small.

  ‘Thank you,’ he murmured.

  ‘If you need me, just call out. Don’t hesitate. I shall be in the kitchen, next door to here. And Dr Fuentes is across the hall.’

  A bell rang somewhere.

  ‘Someone at the door!’ exclaimed Marina. ‘I wonder who that can be at this hour. Not another patient, I hope. We’ve had a busy day.’

  She left the room, leaving the door to stand ajar, and went to see who the caller was.

  Perhaps it’s the girl, Isabel, thought Nick. Maybe she has come back to see me.

  But it was a man who answered Marina’s greeting of ‘Buenas noches’. Good evening.

  Then the doctor’s voice joined in. ‘Ah, Roberto, I thought you might be paying us a visit. Isabel has told you about our young man, I suppose?’

  ‘She said she came across him in the campo in a state of collapse and brought him to you.’ This man had a harsh voice, one that made Nick immediately recoil. This was not a well-wisher.

  ‘She is a kind girl.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I don’t like the idea of her befriending strange men, wounded or not. There are too many Reds and bandits about. Anyway, how is he, your patient?’

  ‘It’ll be touch and go. He should have a crisis during the night when the fever peaks. We’ll have to see if he survives that.’

  ‘I’ve a feeling he will,’ said Marina. ‘He’s a determined lad, I can sense it. A fighter.’

  ‘Who is he, do you know?’

  ‘He’s not been in a fit state to answer questions.’

  ‘No papers?’

  ‘No idea. He was carrying nothing.’

  ‘What about his clothes, Marina? Do you have them?’

  ‘Well, yes, I’ve just been helping him to undress.’

  ‘Fetch them, please.’

  Marina came back into Nick’s room. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, then she scooped up his clothes from the floor and went back to rejoin the two men.

  ‘I was just going to wash them,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s have a look first. Couple of pesetas in that pocket and some cents. Doesn’t tell us much. Certainly no sign of papers. What about the other pocket? Now that’s interesting. A penknife.’

  ‘How so?’ asked Dr Fuentes.

  ‘It’s not Spanish. Made in England. Look, do you see, Doctor?’

  ‘I dare say you might be able to buy them here. Before the war, of course. It doesn’t look very new.’

  ‘He speaks Spanish,’ put in Marina.

  ‘He had no haversack with him? No bag of any kind?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I must have left it in the cave, thought Nick, with my water-bottle and bedroll. I must get them back before I move on. I shall need them.

  ‘Odd, isn’t it, wouldn’t you agree? A complete stranger wandering in the campo without any identification or belongings except for an English penknife?’

  ‘We’ve had a lot of strangers wandering about in recent times, have we not?’ said Dr Fuentes. ‘Men returning home after the war.’

  ‘Yes, your patient might have been trying to do that. The penknife makes me wonder though if he might not have been left behind by one of the International Brigades.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have been old enough to fight in the war,’ said Marina. ‘I’d say he was about sixteen, the same age as your Isabel.’

  Your Isabel. Could this man whom he could hear but not see be Isabel’s father? Nick found it difficult to connect the two in his head.

  ‘We had some boys of fifteen and sixteen fighting for us. Proud to fight. Let’s have a closer look at his clothes.’

  Thank goodness Jean-Luc told me to cut out all the labels, thought Nick.

  ‘Well, well. Look at this, Doctor! The label has been cut out from his shirt and his trousers. I wonder why he would have done that? Perhaps to conceal his country of origin? I think I’d like to see this young man.’

  ‘You can see him, Roberto, but you won’t be able to question him.’

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ said Marina. ‘I gave him a pill.’

  ‘I am only going to look. I might even recognize him.’

  ‘He’s in the surgery,’ said Dr Fuentes. ‘Through the back.’

  Nick lay still, controlling the trembling in his legs as best he could, and kept his eyes shut. This
man, whoever he was, whatever he was, spelled danger. They were coming along the hall, pushing back the door of his room, and now entering. He was aware of a shadow bending over him.

  ‘I’m fairly sure I haven’t seen him before. And I know most of the young men in the villages round about.’

  ‘I expect you do,’ said Dr Fuentes, ‘in your job.’

  His job, thought Nick, what can his job be? A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker? His thoughts were becoming more muddled and hazy by the minute.

  ‘He looks Spanish,’ offered Marina.

  The man grunted. ‘Well, there’s obviously nothing to be done for the present. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  ‘He’ll need twenty-four hours at the very least,’ said Dr Fuentes. ‘I would be very unhappy to have a patient disturbed while he’s fighting a fever.’

  ‘Very well. Day after tomorrow then, in the morning. How about that? I doubt if he needs to be guarded. He’s obviously in no shape to run off anywhere.’

  The man laughed, but the other two did not join in. Nick felt the shadow move away from his bed. He opened his eyes to take a quick look. The man was wearing the uniform of the Civil Guard.

  Seven

  Sleep came over Nick like a relentless wave, sweeping him up and sucking him under. He felt himself going down as if to the bottom of the sea and was happy to go. Oblivion was what he wanted. He slept a deep but troubled sleep, broken by nightmares and spells of raving, during which he was tended by Marina talking to him in a soothing voice and wiping his brow with a cold wet cloth. In the morning she told him that his fever had peaked just after midnight, and from then on he had become calmer.

  He felt weak but at least his mind was clear. Marina brought him some warm milk, which comforted his dry throat, and then, at her urging, he forced down a piece of dry bread and a few green olives. She told him he must try to rebuild his strength. He remembered the man in the grey-green uniform, could hear his voice in his ear: He’s obviously in no shape to make a run for it. He had to get into shape and make a run for it, and he had to do it quickly, before the man came back.

  ‘You were crazed in the night,’ said Marina. ‘You raved. I could not understand much of what you said.’ She glanced round, making sure the door was closed before she added quietly, ‘You were speaking English.’

  He understood what she meant but, also, that she would not betray him.

  ‘A man came here last night,’ he said.

  ‘He is a sergeant in the Civil Guard. He’s in charge of the station in the village.’

  ‘And Isabel?’

  ‘She is his daughter.’

  So Isabel had betrayed him! Yet he had trusted her. He could have sworn, when he had looked her in the face and met her eye, that she was trustworthy. There had been an openness in her look, just as there was in Marina’s now. Could he have been mistaken? Could he be sure that Marina would not betray him too?

  ‘She’s a fine girl, Isabel. She’s had to take over the care of her family. Her mother went to pieces when they lost the eldest boy.’

  Nick did not ask how or when the boy had been ‘lost’. In the war, he presumed.

  ‘This is mainly a Nationalist village,’ said Marina, taking on the quiet, guarded voice again. ‘It’s staunchly pro-Franco. Not everyone is for him, of course, but those who are not know well enough to keep their mouths shut. We have seen terrible fighting here, reprisals and counter-reprisals. Many of our young men have been shot and killed. Or hanged. Yes, that, too. We want peace now.’

  She straightened herself up as the door opened and Dr Fuentes came in.

  ‘Marina, you go and get some sleep. You’ve been up all night.’

  ‘And you, Doctor, for much of it.’

  Nick was alarmed. Had the doctor heard him raving in English too? Was he pro-Franco? He had sounded friendly enough to the sergeant, Isabel’s father. But perhaps he had no choice. No one could afford to get on the wrong side of the guards.

  ‘I got some sleep after midnight,’ said Dr Fuentes. ‘So, off you go, Marina! You need your rest too.’

  When she had gone Dr Fuentes took the chair beside the bed that she had vacated.

  ‘I think you are going to make it now, lad. It will take some time for your hand to heal and you’ll have to be careful not to get a secondary infection in it. I wouldn’t give much for your chances if you did. It will have to be dressed regularly. Where will you be heading for when you leave here?’

  Nick had a ready answer prepared and used it now, feeling a little guilty that he was about to lie to the doctor who, as far as he could judge, was a good and an honest man. But then, thinking of Isabel, it seemed that he was not such a good judge of character after all.

  ‘Toledo,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, Toledo. I know it quite well.’

  Nick’s heart did a plummet.

  ‘You have family there?’

  ‘My grandparents.’

  ‘Which part do they live in?’

  ‘In the centre.’

  ‘Near the castle?’

  ‘Quite near.’

  ‘You have some distance still to go, then?’

  Nick felt anxious. Why was the doctor asking him so many questions? Would he go straight to the sergeant and tell him what he had found out about him?

  ‘Let’s have another look at your hand and see if I can clean it up a bit more.’

  Nick needed brandy, again, to cope with the ordeal.

  ‘By the time it’s healed we’ll have turned you into an alcoholic!’

  Nick was in too much pain to smile. After the hand had been rebound he was given a painkiller, by which time he was ready to sleep again. He was in no shape to run anywhere.

  Before the doctor left the room he bent over him and said quietly, ‘By the way, lad, there is no castle in Toledo. Perhaps your grandparents live near the river. The River Tajo.’ And with that, he went out.

  Nick’s next visitor was Isabel. He was in that state of being half asleep, half awake, when he heard Marina’s voice.

  ‘I’ll see if he’s awake.’

  ‘Don’t disturb him if he’s not,’ said Isabel.

  He did not want to see her, could not bear to have to talk and pretend that she was a good friend. So she had saved his life and brought him here, but only to deliver him into the hands of her father afterwards. She must know that strangers wandering in the campo would be regarded with suspicion, that they would be questioned by the guards, and that if they did not give the right answers they would not escape lightly. She was her father’s daughter, after all. And there could not be a soul living in Spain who did not know about the cruelty and torture that had taken place on both sides of the divide. He closed his eyes.

  The door opened and he was aware of Marina approaching the bed, then retreating again.

  ‘He’s sound asleep, Isabel.’

  ‘In that case…’

  ‘Yes, it’s best not to waken him.’

  ‘Tell him I came though, will you?’

  ‘I will. Look in later, dear.’

  ‘I have to go and visit Father’s sister, Aunt Arrieta. I won’t be back till late. I’ll come in the morning.’

  Her father, too, had said he would return in the morning, but, in fact, he came later that afternoon. Nick heard Marina talking to him in the hall.

  ‘No, he is not properly conscious yet, Sergeant Morales. It has been a bad fever. It has abated somewhat but he is still very ill indeed. Dr Fuentes left orders that no one was to visit him.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning then, as agreed. I am not prepared to put it off any longer.’

  ‘Buenas tardes, Sergeant.’ Good afternoon. Marina said it with a finality that suggested he should not trouble her again that day. Nick smiled.

  She came into the room. ‘Could you eat an egg now? I have a lovely fresh one, laid only this morning by the doctor’s hen. We only have one hen – the rest were all stolen – but she does her best by us.’

  She brought in a tr
ay with the egg lightly boiled, a thick slice of bread dressed with olive oil and a mug of warmed milk, and sat by him until he had finished every last crumb.

  ‘You are picking up, I think?’

  He had been out of bed and had managed to walk to the toilet, his legs buckling a bit as he went, that was true, but at least he had made it there and back, unsupported.

  ‘Marina, I can’t stay here much longer.’

  Her face looked troubled. ‘You are not fit to leave.’

  ‘I have to, before tomorrow morning. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do. But you must have another good night’s sleep first. You can leave before first light. You can’t walk in the dark. The sergeant won’t come before eight or nine.’ She shook her head. ‘But where will you go?’

  ‘I know somewhere I can hole up not far away. I’ll stay there until I’m fit enough to move on.’

  ‘I’ll get you up just before six. I’ll make sure that I do, don’t worry. We have a bargain then – you promise me to sleep well and I will wake you in good time.’

  In the evening, Dr Fuentes dressed Nick’s hand again and pronounced himself pleased with his progress. ‘Early days yet, of course, very early, but so far we can say so good.’

  For supper Marina brought more milk and bread, a couple of juicy tomatoes and some olives.

  ‘I have to eat all this?’

  ‘All!’ she declared firmly. ‘Or else I won’t wake you in the morning.’ She looked at him for a moment, then said, ‘I don’t even know your name. I would like to know it.’

  ‘Nicolás,’ he said.

  ‘Nicolás, how old are you? Sixteen?’

  Nick nodded.

  ‘You are very young. Many boys your age have lost their lives in our war. Be careful.’

  By the time he had eaten the sun had gone down and he was ready for sleep. Without a good night’s rest he would make it no further than the garden wall. Marina handed him a painkiller, then she turned out the lamp.

  ‘Sleep well, Nicolás,’ she said and left him.

  He would have to trust her to wake him. A small doubt still niggled, telling him that it was foolish to trust anyone but yourself. Hadn’t Jean-Luc stressed that? And hadn’t Isabel betrayed him? So why not Marina? Then he shook himself. He was being unfair doubting her for even a second; she had been so good to him. It was possible to recognize good people.