The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Twenty-Six

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Marcus Logan turned up dragging one leg, almost deaf in one ear and with his arm in a sling. All his injuries were on the same side of his body, the left-hand side, the one that had been closest to the exploding shell that had knocked him over and nearly killed him while he was covering the attacks of the Nationalist artillery on Madrid for his agency. Rosalinda had arranged for an official car to meet him at the port of Tangiers and bring him directly to the Hotel Nacional in Tetouan.

I had waited for them seated on one of the wicker chairs in the hotel’s covered courtyard, surrounded by flowerpots and tiles with Arab decorations. The walls were covered in trellises bearing climbing creepers, and large Moorish lanterns hung from the ceiling. The murmur of other people’s conversations and the burbling of the water in a little fountain kept me company as I waited.

The last bit of afternoon sun was filtering through the skylight when Rosalinda arrived; the journalist followed ten minutes later. Over the previous days I’d assembled in my mind an image of an impulsive, brusque man, someone sour, with enough nerve to try to intimidate anyone he came across in order to get what he wanted. But I was wrong, just as we are almost always wrong when we construct preconceptions on the fragile basis of a single act or a handful of words. I knew I was wrong the moment the blackmailing journalist came through the archway of the courtyard with his tie loose and his light linen suit full of creases.

He recognized us at once; he only had to sweep the room with his gaze to be sure that we were the only pair of young women sitting alone—a blonde who looked obviously foreign and a dark one with the classic look of a Spaniard. We readied ourselves to receive him without getting up, braced to defend ourselves against this most inconvenient of visitors. But the Marcus Logan who appeared on that early African evening could have awakened any feeling in us but fear. He was tall and seemed to be somewhere between thirty and forty. His brown hair was unkempt, and as he approached limping, supported by a bamboo walking stick, we saw that the left side of his face was covered with the fading marks of cuts and bruises. Even though it was possible to get a sense of the man he must have been before the incident that almost cost him his life, at that moment he was little more than a pained body. No sooner had he greeted us with all the courtesy his pitiful state would allow than he slumped into a chair, trying unsuccessfully to disguise the discomfort and fatigue that were building up in his body, punished by the long journey.

“Mrs. Fox and Miss Quiroga, I suppose,” were his first words, which he spoke in English.

“Yes, we are indeed,” said Rosalinda. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Logan. And now, if you don’t mind, I think we should proceed in Spanish; I’m afraid my friend won’t be able to join us otherwise.”

“Of course, I’m sorry,” he said, addressing me in excellent Spanish.

He didn’t look like an unscrupulous extortionist, just a professional who tried to get by as best he could and who grabbed opportunities that presented themselves to him. Like Rosalinda, like me. Like everyone in those days. Before going right into the matter that had brought him to Morocco and seeking confirmation from Rosalinda, he chose to show us his credentials. He worked for a British news agency, he had been accredited to cover the Spanish war on both sides, and although he was based in the capital he’d spent his days constantly on the move. Until the unexpected had happened. They admitted him to a hospital in Madrid, performed emergency surgery, and when they could they evacuated him to London. He’d spent several weeks in the Royal London Hospital, bearing his pain and his treatments—bedbound, immobilized, longing to return to active life.

When news reached him that someone related to the Spanish High Commission in Morocco needed some information he could provide, he saw the clouds part. He knew he wasn’t in a physical state to return to his constant comings-and-goings across the Peninsula, but a visit to the Protectorate might allow him to progress with his convalescence while also partially reviving his professional spirit. Before he’d been given permission to travel he’d had to fight with his doctors, his superiors, and everyone else who approached his bed to try to convince him not to move; the frustration combined with his physical state had driven him to the verge of pulling the trigger. So he apologized to Rosalinda for his brusqueness during their telephone call, he crossed and uncrossed his legs painfully several times, and then he finally got down to more pressing concerns.

“I haven’t eaten anything since this morning; would it be all right if I invited you for dinner and we talked then?”

We accepted; truth was, I’d have accepted anything to be able to talk to him. I could have eaten in a latrine or rolled in the mud with pigs; I’d have chewed on cockroaches and drunk rat poison to wash them down, anything to get the information I’d spent so many days waiting for. Logan gracefully called over one of the Arab waiters bustling around the courtyard serving drinks and collecting glasses and asked him for a table in the hotel restaurant.

“Just a moment, please, sir.” The waiter went off to speak to someone and moments later we were approached by the Spanish maître d’, unctuous and reverential. “Right away, sir, right away, do please come with me, ladies, come with me, sir. Not a minute’s wait for Mrs. Fox and her friends, naturally.”

Logan gestured us ahead of him into the dining room, while the maître d’ indicated a showy central table, a conspicuous bullring that would ensure that no one would be left without a prime view of Beigbeder’s beloved Englishwoman. The journalist politely turned that table down and pointed toward another more isolated table at the back. All the tables were impeccably set with spotless tablecloths, water and wineglasses, and white napkins folded on the porcelain plates. It was still early, though, and there were only a dozen or so people spread around the room.

We chose from the menu and were served some sherry to occupy us while we waited. It was Rosalinda who took on the role of hostess and got the conversation started. The earlier meeting in the courtyard had been mere formality, but it had helped to ease tension. The journalist had introduced himself and told us how he’d ended up in the condition he was in; we, meanwhile, had relaxed on discovering that he wasn’t threatening and had made a few trivial comments about life in Spanish Morocco. All three of us knew, however, that this wasn’t just a polite meeting for making new friends, chatting about infirmities, and drawing picturesque images of North Africa. What had brought us together that night was a negotiation, all cut and dried, in which two separate sides were implicated: two sides who had made their demands and their conditions perfectly clear. The time had come to lay everything on the table and find out how far each one could get.

“I want you to know that everything you asked me for on the phone the other day has been arranged,” Rosalinda began as the waiter moved off with our order.

“Perfect,” replied the journalist.

“You’ll have your interview with the high commissioner, in private and as extensively as you find useful. You’ll also be given a temporary residence permit for the Spanish Protectorate area,” Rosalinda went on, “and invitations will be issued in your name to all the official engagements in the next few weeks. Some of these will be extremely significant.”

He raised the eyebrow on the intact side of his face in a question.

“We’re shortly expecting a visit from Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law; I imagine you know who I’m talking about.”

“Yes, of course,” he confirmed.

“He’s coming to Morocco to commemorate the anniversary of the uprising; he’ll be staying three days. Various activities are being arranged to receive him—the general director of propaganda, Dionisio Ridruejo, arrived yesterday. He’s come over to coordinate the preparations with the secretariat of the High Commission. We expect you to attend any official events involving civilians.”

“Very many thanks—and do please extend my gratitude to the high commissioner.”

“It’ll be a pleasure having you here with us,” replied Rosalinda with the delicacy of a perfect hostess about to unsheathe a sword. “I hope you understand that we, too, have a number of conditions.”

“Of course,” said Logan after a sip of sherry.

“Any information you wish to send abroad will first have to be checked by the press office of the High Commission.”

“I have no problem with that.”

At that moment the waiters approached with our food, and I was overwhelmed by a great sense of relief. In spite of the elegance with which the two of them were managing the negotiations, I hadn’t been able to help feeling a little uncomfortable, as though I’d slipped into a party to which I hadn’t been invited. They were discussing things that had nothing to do with me, matters that might not have contained any great official secrets but that nonetheless were far from what I imagined a simple dressmaker ought to be hearing. Several times I repeated to myself that I wasn’t in the wrong place, that it was my place, too, because it had been my own mother’s evacuation that had prompted this dinner. All the same, it wasn’t easy convincing myself of that.

The arrival of the food interrupted the exchange of requirements and concessions for a few moments. Sole for the ladies, chicken with trimmings for the gentleman, the waiters announced. We made brief comments about the food, the freshness of the fish on the Mediterranean coast, how divine the vegetables from the Río Martín plain were. The moment the waiters had withdrawn, the conversation picked up exactly where it had left off just a few minutes earlier.

“Any other conditions?” asked the journalist before bringing the fork to his mouth.

“Yes, though I wouldn’t exactly call it a condition. Rather it’s something that will help you as much as us.”

“Then it will be easy for me to accept,” he said after swallowing his first mouthful.

“That’s what I’m hoping,” Rosalinda agreed. “You see, Logan, we move in two quite different worlds, you and I, but we’re compatriots and we both know that on the whole the Nationalists tend to be sympathetic to the Germans and the Italians, and haven’t the least affection for the English.”

“Just so, absolutely,” he confirmed.

“Well then, that’s why I’d like you to pass yourself off as a friend of mine. Without disguising the fact that you’re a journalist, of course, but a journalist associated with me, and by extension the high commissioner. In this way we believe you’ll be welcomed with somewhat more moderate feelings of suspicion.”

“By whom?”

“By everyone: the Spanish and Muslim local authorities, the foreign consular corps, the press . . . I don’t have many fervent admirers in any of those groups, I have to be honest, but at least formally they do maintain a certain respect for my closeness to the high commissioner. If we can introduce you as a friend of mine, perhaps we can get them to extend that respect to you.”

“What does Colonel Beigbeder think of that?”

“He agrees entirely.”

“Then there’s nothing more for us to discuss. It doesn’t seem a bad idea to me, and as you say, it could be good for all of us. Any more conditions?”

“None on our side,” said Rosalinda, raising her glass as though in a little toast.

“Perfect. That’s all clear, then. Well, I think it’s time for me to bring you up to date with the matter you’ve asked me about.”

My stomach leapt: the time had come. The food and wine seemed to have brought Marcus Logan a little bit of new vigor; he appeared rather livelier. Although he had maintained a cool serenity during the negotiations, it was possible to make out a positive attitude in him, and an evident desire not to trouble Rosalinda and Beigbeder any more than necessary. I guessed that this might have something to do with his profession, but I had no way of knowing for sure—he was, after all, the first journalist I’d ever met in my life.

“I want you to know first of all that my contact is already on the alert and expects your mother’s evacuation when they mobilize the next operation from Madrid to the coast.”

I had to grip the edge of the table hard to stop myself from getting up and throwing my arms around him. I did restrain myself, however: the dining room in the Hotel Nacional was now full of people and our table, thanks to Rosalinda, was the main attraction that night. An impulsive reaction like giving that foreigner an ecstatic hug would have focused every gaze and whisper on us instantly. So I contained my enthusiasm and suggested my amazement with just a smile and a quiet thank-you.

“You’ll have to supply me with some information, then I’ll cable it to my agency in London. From there they’ll get in touch with Christopher Lance, who’s the person controlling the whole operation.”

“Who is he?” Rosalinda wanted to know.

“An English engineer; a veteran of the Great War who’s been settled in Madrid for a number of years. Until the uprising he was working for a Spanish firm with British shares, the Ginés Navarro & Sons civil engineering company, with its headquarters in the Paseo del Prado and branches in Valencia and Alicante. His projects with them have included building roads, bridges, a large dam in Soria, a hydroelectric plant near Grenada, and a mooring mast for zeppelins in Seville. When the war broke out, the Navarros disappeared, I don’t know whether by choice or by force. The workers set up a committee and took control of the company. Lance could have left then, but he didn’t.”

“Why not?” we asked in unison.

The journalist shrugged as he took a big swallow of wine.

“It’s good for the pain,” he said by way of excuse, raising his glass to us to indicate its medicinal effects. “To tell you the truth,” he went on, “I don’t know why Lance didn’t return to England, I’ve never been able to get a reason from him that would really justify what he did. Before the war began, the English who were living in Madrid—like almost all the foreigners—weren’t involved in Spanish politics and watched the situation with indifference, even with a certain amount of ironic detachment. They were aware, naturally, of the tensions that existed between the conservatives and the parties on the left, but saw them as just something typical of the country, a part of the national character. Bullfighting, siestas, garlic, oil, and fraternal hatred, all very picturesque, very Spanish. Until everything exploded—and then they saw how serious things were and started rushing to get out of Madrid as quickly as possible. With a few exceptions, such as Lance, who chose to send his wife home and remain in Spain.”

“Not very sensible,” I ventured.

“He’s probably a little crazy, yes,” he said, half joking. “But he’s a good sort and he knows what he’s doing; he’s no reckless adventurer, or an opportunist like the ones who spring up all over the place at times like these.”

“What is it that he does, exactly?” asked Rosalinda.

“He gives help to people who need it. He gets people out of Madrid when he can, takes them to some Mediterranean port and from there puts them on any kind of British boat: a warship is as useful to him as a packet boat or a lemon freighter.”

“Does he charge anything?” I wanted to know.

“No, nothing. He doesn’t make anything from it. There are people turning a profit from things like this—not him.”

He was going to explain more to us, but at that moment a young soldier in breeches, shining boots, and his cap under his arm approached our table. He gave a martial salute with a look of concentration on his face and handed an envelope to Rosalinda. She took out a folded sheet of paper, read it, and smiled.

“I’m truly very sorry, you’ll have to excuse me,” she said, hurriedly putting her cigarette case, her gloves, and the note in her handbag. “Something has come up, something unexpected,” she added, then leaned over toward my ear. “Juan Luis has come back from Seville early,” she whispered impulsively.

Despite his burst eardrum, the journalist probably heard it, too.

“You keep talking, you can tell me all about it later,” she added loudly. “Sira, querida, I’ll see you soon. And you, Logan, be ready tomorrow, a car will be here to fetch you at one. You’ll have lunch at my house with the high commissioner and then you’ll have the whole afternoon for your interview.”

Rosalinda was accompanied to the door by the young soldier and countless brazen pairs of eyes. As soon as she had disappeared from view, I encouraged Logan to resume his explanations.

“If Lance doesn’t make any money from it, and he isn’t moved by political concerns, why does he do this?”

He shrugged again, a gesture that apologized for his inability to find any reasonable explanation.

“There are people like that. They’re called pimpernels. Lance is a rather singular individual, a sort of crusader for lost causes. According to him, there’s nothing political about what he’s doing; the concerns that move him are purely humanitarian. Most likely he’d have done the same for Republicans if he’d found himself in the Nationalist zone. Maybe the inclination comes from being the son of a canon of Wells Cathedral—who knows? The fact is, at the moment of the uprising, the ambassador Sir Henry Chilton and most of his staff moved to San Sebastián to spend the summer, and the embassy in Madrid was left in the control of a civil servant who wasn’t up to the job. Lance, as a veteran in the British colony, quite spontaneously took the reins. As you Spaniards say, ‘Without praying to either God or the Devil,’ he opened the embassy as a refuge for British citizens—barely more than three hundred of them at that time, as I’ve heard. In principle none of them were directly involved in politics, but most were conservatives in sympathy with the right, so they sought out diplomatic protection while they waited to find out how events were unfolding. But what happened was that the situation grew beyond what they’d expected—several hundred other people rushed to the embassy for refuge, too. They claimed to have been born in Gibraltar or on an English ship during a crossing, to have relatives in Great Britain, to have done business with the British Chambers of Commerce; any ruse to get themselves under the protection of the Union Jack, our flag.”

“Why your embassy in particular?”

“It wasn’t only ours, far from it. Actually, ours was one of the most reluctant to offer refuge. Everyone did almost exactly the same in the early days: they took in their own citizens, and also some Spaniards in need of protection.”

“And then?”

“Some legations continued to offer asylum and get involved directly or indirectly in the transfer of refugees. Chile in particular; France, Argentina, and Norway, too. Others, meanwhile, once the first period of uncertainty had ended, refused to carry on. Lance isn’t acting as a representative of the British government, however; everything he does, he does on his own account. As I said, our embassy was one of the ones that refused to continue to be involved in offering asylum and evacuating refugees. And it isn’t that Lance is dedicated to helping the Nationalist side in the abstract, but people who as individuals need to get out of Madrid. For ideological reasons, for family reasons—whatever the reasons. It’s true that he began by installing himself in the embassy and managed somehow to get them to grant him the post of honorary attaché so that he could arrange the evacuation of the British citizens in the early days of the war, but from then on he’s acted at his own risk. When it’s in his interest—usually to impress the militiamen and sentries at the checkpoints on the roads—he waves about all the diplomatic paraphernalia he can get his hands on: the red, white, and blue armband on his sleeve to identify himself, little flags on the car, and a huge safe-conduct covered in stamps and seals from the embassy, from six or seven trade unions, and the War Office, whatever he can get his hands on. He’s a pretty odd sort, this Lance: pleasant, talkative, always showily dressed, with jackets and ties that pain you to look at. Sometimes I think he exaggerates so much just so that no one takes him too seriously and so they don’t suspect him of anything.”

“How does he transport people to the coast?”

“I don’t know exactly; he’s reluctant to give away details. At first I think he started off using vehicles from the embassy and vans from his firm, until these were requisitioned. Lately it would seem he’s been using a Scottish ambulance that has been made available to the Republic. And he’s usually accompanied by Margery Hill, a nurse from the Anglo-American hospital—do you know it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s on Calle Juan Montalvo, near the university, almost right at the front. That’s where they first took me when I was injured, then I was moved for the operation to the hospital they set up in the Palace Hotel.”

“A hospital at the Palace?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes, a field hospital—you didn’t know?”

“I had no idea. When I left Madrid the Palace was—along with the Ritz—the most luxurious of the hotels in the city.”

“Well as you can see, it’s now fulfilling other functions. A lot has changed. I was interned there for a few days, till they decided to evacuate me to London. I already knew Lance before I was interned; the British colony in Madrid was already much diminished in those days. Then he came to see me several times at the Palace; part of his self-imposed humanitarian task is also to help his compatriots who’re facing difficulties. Which is how I learned a bit about the evacuation process, but I only know the details that he chose to tell me. Normally the refugees arrive in the hospital of their own account; sometimes they’re kept awhile so that they can pass for patients, till the next convoy is ready. Usually they both go on all the journeys, Lance and Nurse Hill: apparently she’s unique in her ability to handle officials and militiamen at the checkpoints if things go wrong. And they also usually arrange to bring back to Madrid anything they can get off the Royal Navy ships—medicines, medical equipment, soap, canned food . . .”

“How do they actually make the trip?” I was trying to predict my mother’s journey, to have some idea of what her adventure would consist of.

“I know they leave early in the morning. Lance is already familiar with all the checkpoints, and there are more than thirty; sometimes it takes them more than twelve hours to make the journey. He has, however, become something of a specialist in the psychology of the militiamen: he gets out of the car, talks to them, calls them his comrades, shows them his impressive safe-conduct, offers them tobacco, shares a joke, and takes his leave with a “Long Live Russia!” or a “Death to the Fascists!”: anything that’ll allow him to get back on his way. The only thing he never does is bribe them: he set himself that principle and as far as I know he’s always kept to it. He’s also extremely scrupulous in following the Republic’s laws—he never disobeys them. And naturally at all times he avoids provoking any incidents that might harm our embassy. Even though he isn’t a diplomat except on an honorary basis, he nonetheless follows the diplomatic code of ethics extremely rigorously.”

No sooner had he finished his answer than I was ready to fire off the next question, evidence that I’d been an apt pupil in acquiring Commissioner Vázquez’s interrogation techniques.

“Which port do they take the refugees to?”

“To Valencia, to Alicante, to Denia—it depends. He studies the situation, designs a plan for the route, and finally, one way or other, arranges to dispatch his cargo.”

“But have these people got papers? Permits? Safe-conducts?”

“To get themselves around Spain, yes, usually. To go abroad, probably not. That’s why the operation to get them embarked is usually the most complicated part: Lance needs to outmaneuver checkpoints, get onto the docks and pass unnoticed among sentries, negotiate with the ships’ officers, slip the refugees on board, and hide them in case there’s a search. All this has to be done carefully, without arousing any suspicion. It’s an extremely delicate business; he’s risking ending up in prison. But for now he’s always managed to make it work.”

We finished our dinner. Logan had struggled to use his cutlery; his left arm wasn’t working a hundred percent. Even so, he’d been thorough in his dealings with the chicken, the large dishes of custard, and several glasses of wine. I, meanwhile, absorbed in listening to him, had barely tasted the sole and hadn’t ordered any dessert.

“Do you want a coffee?” he asked.

“Yes—thank you.”

The truth was that I never drank coffee after dinner except when I needed to stay up working late. But that night I had two good reasons to accept his offer: to prolong the conversation as much as possible, and to stay sharp so as not to miss out on the slightest detail.

“Tell me about Madrid,” I asked him then. My voice came out muted; perhaps I was already guessing that I wasn’t going to like what I heard.

He looked at me hard before answering.

“You don’t know anything about the situation there, do you?”

I dropped my gaze to the tablecloth and shook my head. Learning the details of my mother’s forthcoming evacuation had relaxed me: I was no longer nervous. In spite of his crushed body, Marcus Logan had managed to calm me with his solid, reassuring presence. The relaxation didn’t bring happiness with it, however, but a heavy sadness about everything I’d heard. For my mother, for Madrid, for my country. Immediately I felt a terrible weakness and tears beginning to spring to my eyes.

“The city’s in a very bad way, and there are shortages of basic goods. The situation isn’t good, but everyone finds ways to get through it as best they can,” he said, summing up his reply with a handful of vague platitudes. “Would you mind if I asked you a question?” he added.

“Ask me anything you want,” I replied, my gaze still set on the table. My mother’s future was in his hands—how could I refuse?

“Look, the arrangements have been made, and I can assure you that they’re going to take care of your mother as they’ve promised me they would; you needn’t worry on that score.” He was talking more quietly, more closely. “But to make it work, however, I’ve had to—let’s say—invent a scenario, and I’m not sure how much it corresponds to reality. I’ve had to say that she’s in a high-risk situation and needs evacuating urgently; I didn’t need to give any more details than that. But I’d like to know how much I was correct and how much I was lying. So if you wouldn’t mind, would you tell me what your mother’s situation really is? Do you think she’s in real danger in Madrid?”

A waiter arrived with the coffees and we stirred in our sugar, the spoons clinking against the porcelain in a measured rhythm. After a few seconds, I raised my gaze and looked right at him.

“You want to know the truth? The truth is that I don’t think her life is in danger, but I’m the only thing my mother has in the world, and she’s the only thing I have. We’ve always lived alone, the two of us together struggling to get by: we’re just two working women. But there was a day when I made a mistake, and I let her down. And now the only thing I want is to get her back. You told me before that your friend Lance doesn’t do things for political motivations, that he’s only moved by humanitarian concerns. You decide whether or not reuniting a mother without means with her only daughter is a humanitarian reason—I don’t know.”

I couldn’t say any more, I knew my tears were about to start pouring out.

“I have to go, tomorrow I’ve got to be up early, I have a lot of work to do, thank you for the dinner, for everything . . .”

The phrases tumbled out, my voice hoarse, as I stood and picked up my handbag. I tried not to look up, so as not to let him see the damp streaks running down my cheeks.

“I’ll go with you,” he said, getting up, hiding the pain.

“There’s no need, thank you: I live very close, just around the corner.”

I turned and began to walk toward the exit. I’d barely gone a few steps when I felt his hand brush against my elbow.

“Lucky that you live nearby, that way I won’t have to walk so much. Let’s go.”

With a gesture he asked the maître d’ to charge the bill to his room, and we left. He didn’t speak to me or try to calm me; he didn’t say a word about what he’d just heard. He simply remained beside me in silence and let me recover my composure. The moment we’d set foot on the street, he stopped dead. Leaning on his walking stick, he looked up at the starry sky and breathed in longingly.

“Morocco smells good.”

“There’s the mountain nearby, and the sea, too,” I replied, already somewhat calmer. “I suppose that must be why.”

We walked slowly; he asked me how long I’d been in the Protectorate, what life was like in such a place.

“We’ll meet again, I’ll keep you informed whenever I get any new information,” he said when I indicated that we’d arrived at my door. “And rest assured, you can count on the fact that they’ll be doing whatever they can to help her.”

“Thank you very much—truly—and sorry about the way I reacted. Sometimes I find it hard to keep myself in check. These aren’t easy times,” I whispered a bit shyly.

He tried to smile, but only half succeeded.

“I understand perfectly, don’t worry.”

This time there were no tears; the worst of it had passed. We just held each other’s gaze, said good night, and I began my walk up the stairs thinking how little this Marcus Logan resembled the threatening opportunist Rosalinda and I had been expecting.