Winter of the World

They drove on, in the direction in which he had been heading, as the sun went down over the mountains on their right-hand side. There were no big towns between here and the border, so he assumed they intended to put him in a village jail for the night. Perhaps he could escape from there. Failing that, they would undoubtedly take him back to Perpignan tomorrow and hand him over to the city police. What then? Would he be interrogated? The prospect made him cold with fear. The French police would beat him up, the Germans would torture him. If he survived, he would end up in a prisoner of war camp, where he would remain until the end of the war, or until he died of malnutrition. And yet he was only a few miles from the border!

They drove into a small town. Could he escape between the car and the jail? He could make no plan: he did not know the terrain. There was nothing he could do but remain alert and seize any opportunity.

The car turned off the main street and into an alley behind a row of shops. Were they going to shoot him here and dump his body?

The car stopped at the back of a restaurant. The yard was littered with boxes and giant cans. Through a small window Lloyd could see a brightly lit kitchen.

The gendarme in the front passenger seat got out, then opened Lloyd’s door, on the side of the car nearest the building. Was this his chance? He would have to run around the car and along the alley. It was dusk: after the first few yards he would not be an easy target.

The gendarme reached into the car and grasped Lloyd’s arm, holding him as he got out and stood up. The second one got out immediately behind Lloyd. The opportunity was not good enough.

But why had they brought him here?

They walked him into the kitchen. A chef was beating eggs in a bowl and an adolescent boy was washing up in a big sink. One of the gendarmes said: ‘Here’s an Englishman. He calls himself Leandro.’

Without pausing in his work, the chef lifted his head and bawled: ‘Teresa! Come here!’

Lloyd remembered another Teresa, a beautiful Spanish anarchist who had taught soldiers to read and write.

The kitchen door swung wide and she walked in.

Lloyd stared at her in astonishment. There was no possibility of mistake: he would never forget those big eyes and that mass of black hair, even though she wore the white cotton cap and apron of a waitress.

At first she did not look at him. She put a pile of plates on the counter next to the young washer-up, then turned to the gendarmes with a smile and kissed each on both cheeks, saying: ‘Pierre! Michel! How are you?’ Then she turned to Lloyd, stared at him, and said in Spanish: ‘No – it’s not possible. Lloyd, is it really you?’

He could only nod dumbly.

She put her arms around him, embraced him, and kissed him on both cheeks.

One of the gendarmes said: ‘There we are. All is well. We have to go. Good luck!’ He handed Lloyd his canvas bag, then they left.

Lloyd found his tongue. ‘What’s going on?’ he said to Teresa in Spanish. ‘I thought I was being taken to jail!’

‘They hate the Nazis, so they help us,’ she said.

‘Who is us?’

‘I’ll explain later. Come with me.’ She opened a door that gave on to a staircase and led him to an upper storey, where there was a sparsely furnished bedroom. ‘Wait here. I’ll bring you something to eat.’

Lloyd lay down on the bed and contemplated his extraordinary fortune. Five minutes ago he had been expecting torture and death. Now he was waiting for a beautiful woman to bring him supper.

It could change again just as quickly, he reflected.

She returned half an hour later with an omelette and fried potatoes on a thick plate. ‘We’ve been busy, but we close soon,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

He ate the food quickly.

Night fell. He listened to the chatter of customers leaving and the clang of pots being put away, then Teresa reappeared with a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

Lloyd asked her why she had left Spain.

‘Our people are being murdered by the thousand,’ she said. ‘For those they don’t kill, they have passed the Law of Political Responsibilities, making criminals of everyone who supported the government. You can lose all your assets if you opposed Franco even by “grave passivity”. You are innocent only if you can prove you supported him.’

Lloyd thought bitterly of Chamberlain’s reassurance to the House of Commons, back in March, that Franco had renounced political reprisals. What an evil liar Chamberlain had been.

Teresa went on: ‘Many of our comrades are in filthy prison camps.’

‘I don’t suppose you have any idea what happened to Sergeant Lenny Griffiths, my friend?’

Teresa shook her head. ‘I never saw him again after Belchite.’

‘And you . . . ?’

‘I escaped from Franco’s men, came here, got a job as a waitress . . . and found there was other work for me to do.’

‘What work?’

‘I take escaping soldiers across the mountains. That’s why the gendarmes brought you to me.’