Winter of the World

‘Silence!’ Bobrov barked. ‘Stand to attention!’

Automatically, they all stood to attention: Lloyd, Lenny, Dave, Muggsy and Joe in a line. Lloyd feared he was about to faint.

‘About face!’

They turned their backs. Lloyd thought: What now?

‘Those who are wounded, fall out.’

Lloyd and Lenny stepped back.

Bobrov said: ‘The walking wounded are transferred to prisoner escort duty.’

Dimly, Lloyd perceived that this meant he would probably be guarding prisoners of war on a train to Barcelona. He swayed on his feet. Right now I couldn’t guard a flock of sheep, he thought.

Bobrov said: ‘Retreating under fire without orders is desertion.’

Lloyd turned and looked at Bobrov. To his astonishment and horror he saw that Bobrov had drawn his revolver from its buttoned holster.

Bobrov stepped forward so that he was immediately behind the three men standing to attention. ‘You three are found guilty and sentenced to death.’ He raised the gun until the barrel was three inches from the back of Dave’s head.

Then he fired.

There was a bang. A bullet hole appeared in Dave’s head, and blood and brains exploded from his brow.

Lloyd could not believe what he was seeing.

Next to Dave, Muggsy began to turn, his mouth open to shout; but Bobrov was quicker. He swung the gun to Muggsy’s neck and fired again. The bullet entered behind Muggsy’s right ear and came out through his left eye, and he crumpled.

At last Lloyd’s voice came, and he shouted: ‘No!’

Joe Eli turned, roaring with shock and rage, and raised his hands to grab Bobrov. The gun banged again and Joe got a bullet in the throat. Blood spurted like a fountain from his neck and splashed Bobrov’s Red Army uniform, causing the colonel to curse and jump back a pace. Joe fell to the ground but did not die immediately. Lloyd watched, helpless, as the blood pumped out of Joe’s carotid artery into the parched Spanish earth. Joe seemed to try to speak, but no words came; and then his eyes closed and he went limp.

‘There’s no mercy for cowards,’ Bobrov said, and he walked away.

Lloyd looked at Dave on the ground: thin, grimy, brave as a lion, sixteen years old and dead. Killed not by the Fascists but by a stupid and brutal Soviet officer. What a waste, Lloyd thought, and tears came to his eyes.

A sergeant came running out of the barn. ‘They’ve given up!’ he shouted joyfully. ‘The town hall has surrendered – they’ve raised the white flag. We’ve taken Belchite!’

The dizziness overwhelmed Lloyd at last, and he fainted.

(v)

London was cold and wet. Lloyd walked along Nutley Street in the rain, heading for his mother’s house. He still wore his zipped Spanish army blouson and corduroy breeches, and boots with no socks. He carried a small backpack containing his spare underwear, a shirt, and a tin cup. Around his neck he had the red scarf Dave had turned into an improvised sling for his wounded arm. The arm still hurt, but he no longer needed the sling.

It was late on an October afternoon.

As expected, he had been put on a supply train returning to Barcelona crammed with rebel prisoners. The journey was not much more than a hundred miles, but it had taken three days. In Barcelona he had been separated from Lenny and lost contact with him. He had got a lift in a lorry going north. After the trucker dropped him off he had walked, hitch-hiked, and ridden in railway wagons full of coal or gravel or – on one lucky occasion – cases of wine. He had slipped across the border into France at night. He had slept rough, begged food, done odd jobs for a few coins and, for two glorious weeks, earned his cross-Channel boat fare picking grapes in a Bordeaux vineyard. Now he was home.

He inhaled the damp, soot-smelling Aldgate air as if it were perfume. He stopped at the garden gate and looked up at the terraced house in which he had been born more than twenty-two years ago. Lights glowed behind the rain-streaked windows: someone was at home. He walked up to the front door. He still had his key: he had kept it with his passport. He let himself in.

He dropped his backpack on the floor in the hall, by the hatstand.

From the kitchen he heard: ‘Who’s that?’ It was the voice of his stepfather, Bernie.

Lloyd found he could not speak.

Bernie came into the hall. ‘Who . . . ?’ Then he recognized Lloyd. ‘My life!’ he said. ‘It’s you.’

Lloyd said: ‘Hello, Dad.’

‘My boy,’ said Bernie. He put his arms around Lloyd. ‘Alive,’ Bernie said. Lloyd could feel him shaking with sobs.

After a minute Bernie rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his cardigan then went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Eth!’ he called.

‘What?’

‘Someone to see you.’

‘Just a minute.’

She came down the stairs a few seconds later, pretty as ever in a blue dress. Halfway down she saw his face and turned pale. ‘Oh, Duw,’ she said. ‘It’s Lloyd.’ She came down the rest of the stairs in a rush and threw her arms around him. ‘You’re alive!’ she said.

‘I wrote to you from Barcelona—’

‘We never got that letter.’

‘Then you don’t know . . .’

‘What?’

‘Dave Williams died.’

‘Oh, no!’