300 Days of Sun (7 page)

 

iii

T
here was another oddity that summer in Lisbon. The prelude was a cacophony of pageant processions and fiesta bands that would surge noisily from side streets, stopping the traffic. It took Alva a while to make the connection: the city was host to a great exhibition and trade fair, the Portuguese World Exhibition, a celebration of the country's proud history and, by implication, the glories of the current regime. It was a message to the world, and perhaps more importantly to the Portuguese themselves, that all was well and it was business as usual in this happiest of nations, founded exactly eight hundred years previously. Three hundred years had passed since independence from Spain in 1640. A shiny new road—­the “Marginal”—­had been built along the coast to Estoril and the fishing village of Cascais. Fresh water had been supplied to the inner city for the first time. Programs of municipal building were under way. Literacy rates were rapidly improving.

The Portuguese World Exhibition was staged on the banks of the Tagus with the sixteenth-­century Jerónimos monastery on the rising hill behind as a dramatic backdrop. A brand-­new square had been constructed, complete with a formal garden and fountain. To Alva, as she stood taking it all in, it looked like a film set full of disjointed structures from different movies. Moorish influences jostled up against modernity. Futuristic streets led surprisingly to a drawbridge into medieval chambers where flames burned at the feet of knights in chain mail. The pavilions were self-­consciously modern, sending the message that Portugal was looking to the future. On the riverside was the Monument to the Discoveries, a monolithic stone shaped into the prow of a ship on which stone carvings represented the greatest of the nation's seafaring explorers. In pride of place was Prince Henry the Navigator.

Music swelled through the air on a pleasant breeze as she watched a jeweler fashion flowers from silver filigree, and admired a boat he had made using the same technique. A lace maker tatted with a rapid determination that made Alva smile and think of Michael at his typewriter. Hundreds of ­people were acting parts and showing off their skills in “roads” dedicated to each region of the country. In the Rua do Algarve a man was plaiting grass into rope. When Alva stepped back to get a better picture, she bumped into someone and turned to apologize. It was Ronald Bagshaw.

“Oh, we meet again!” she said. “How are you enjoying all this?”

“It's fascinating. It should never be forgotten, when speaking to the Portuguese, that they are a proud nation that once ruled the seas and led the way in exploring the world beyond their small country on the edge of Europe. History is important here. Come on, let me buy you a coffee.”

They found an open café in front of an exhibition stand decked with all the flags of the world. The Stars and Stripes was one away from the Nazi insignia. The Bartons hadn't seen much of Ronald since the week they had arrived. Last they had heard he had moved out of town to Sintra, where he had a room in a palace with a butler at his disposal. Alva got the impression Michael didn't like him all that much, but had put it down to being one of those difficulties due to the great debt they owed him—­a reminder of weakness that could not easily be forgiven.

They sat at a small round table. The sun was bright and they both had to squint. He was wearing a suit in a loose cut that made her think he might have had it made up since his arrival, though she didn't ask.

“All these national crafts and heroes—­it's rather too close to triumphalism for current tastes, isn't it,” said Ronald.

“I'm not sure an exhibition of ships in bottles strikes quite the same terror as a line of tanks, but I take your point.”

“You're not still at the Métropole, are you?”

“We are, but we're working on it. We need to find somewhere more reasonable.”

“Not that comfortable, the Met.”

“It's not that bad.”

“I meant the other guests.”

“We haven't had any problems.”

“It's a German hotel. Half the rooms are let to Nazi agents.”

“You told us.”

“And the Café Nicola, the Art Deco place—­watch out for the Portuguese secret police there. They're all in with the Gestapo, don't forget. Be careful.”

“Thanks for the tip, but we're fine. None of this is anything to do with us, don't forget.”

The waiter chose that moment to come over.

“A man came to the embassy the other day,” Ronald went on after giving their order. “A Jew from Antwerp. Opened a manila envelope and showed us what was inside. Uncut diamonds, worth an absolute fortune. Wanted fair exchange for a visa.”

“Does a bribe like that work?”

“Not that I saw. Maybe it did. What I'm saying is that these are desperate times. There's no one who is uninvolved.”

The crowds passed, the women in their bright finery, many in variations of the national costume. “Have you been out to Estoril yet?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“You must. How is Michael getting on? I hear he's fixed up with a job.”

“Not exactly. Just freelancing until we can get a berth home. But yes, he's keen to work, he always is. He likes to feel he's doing his bit.”

Ronald frowned. “Does he think America should enter the war?”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Does he, though?”

“I think he's glad we're not in it—­presently, anyhow.”

“We'll win, of course,” he said. “It's just a question of how long it will take, and at what cost.”

They were both silent. Ronald watched a man in a dark suit with shoulder pads stop and consult a leaflet, then linger at a stall selling sweet sticky carob cakes. When he noticed Alva was following his gaze, Ronald sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He might have been relaxing but she noticed that he kept checking back to see if the man was still there as they discussed which way Portugal was swaying.

“Dr. Salazar is a university professor, an economist not a jack-­booted soldier,” he said. “There's much competing propaganda to show whether the Allied or the Axis powers are most supportive of Portugal—­and which are the snakes in the grass, plotting to oust Salazar. As far as the ordinary Portuguese are concerned, the identity of the enemy is still unknown.”

“And in the meantime, it's business as usual.”

“There are a number of relief associations or war ser­vices that need clerical assistance,” he said. “If you were interested, I could put in a word.”

“That's kind. I'll bear it in mind.”

“There's a rather strict Catholic attitude to women in this country. It helps if you have a clearly defined official role.”

“What do you mean?”

“You'll find out. In the meantime, be sure to dress respectfully and don't go out by yourself at night. Not that you would have any reason to, I don't suppose.”

It was not unusual for a woman to have her bottom pinched in the street, as Alva had discovered and had been learning to accept as a form of flattery. She was going to have to reconsider.

“Peasant women carry an equal load with their men,” said Ronald. “If a man is proud, he will let his woman take the burden while he walks beside her unencumbered. But the rules change for middle-­ and upper-­class women. They do not go out alone to a bar or café. They do not even accompany their husbands to such a venue. They do not drink in public and there is nowhere acceptable for women to meet over cups of coffee. They visit each other at home. Children are brought up strictly, and girls are married off very quickly with little experience. It's a very old-­fashioned existence.”

She wasn't quite sure what he was saying besides showing off his knowledge of the social hierarchy. From what she knew of women in Rome, paying lip ser­vice to social etiquette did not mean they lived completely circumscribed lives, only that the organizing of private adventures required a certain amount of planning.

“You need to be careful,” he said.

“So you said.”

“These are tricky times. There's a lot of capital to be made here from the war. Everyone wants something, from the politicians to the whores down at the docks.”

“I know.”

“Never forget you are probably being watched. If not by the Germans, then by the local PVDE—­the Portuguese have their secret police watching the foreigners.”

He continued with similar forthrightness as another band marched past, followed by a troupe of cheerleaders waving gay paper streamers from sticks. “The Gestapo is operating in Lisbon, and the Portuguese police are doing nothing to stop them. They took one anti-­Nazi writer from the street last week, and he hasn't been seen since.”

“It seems so unreal.”

“Damn right it does.” He looked hard at her. “What you must not forget, Mrs. Barton, is that the
escudo
is not the only currency in Lisbon. In a country where newspapers and radio are censored by an authoritarian government, the most valuable commodity of all is information.”

The band finished playing and stopped by the fountain. The musicians were hardly more than children; they started splashing water over one another, shouting and laughing.

“How are you getting back?” Ronald asked.

The Packard was parked close by, so he gave her a lift back to Rossio Square.

A
flock of starlings rose into the pink and gold sky over blackened rooftops as Alva came out of the hotel that evening to meet Michael at the Café Eva. She paused to take a glance around. No one was looking at her as she stepped onto the sidewalk. All she saw and sensed were the petals fallen on stone, the luxuriant brightness, the spiced breaths of breeze, but no afternoon conspiracies.

A yellow tram slid past the café. The passing of the last carriage revealed the usual crowd outside. Blake Curnow was there: a tall, thin man with intense eyes magnified by thick-­rimmed glasses and very dark wiry hair that was graying at the temples. He was always watchful as he chain-­smoked. Frank Ellis, another freelance journalist, was less taciturn, a man whose gangling teenage self still dominated his body. He had a markedly short snub nose, slightly off center. The more Alva got to know him the more she wondered whether that was the result of a punch to the face—­he was extremely annoying. And it was hard not to look into the twin tunnels of those round black nostrils when he had the unfortunate habit of tipping his head back.

There were three other men Alva didn't know. They looked up impatiently as she approached. The Café Eva was considered an all-­male working environment.

“We'll see you tomorrow,” Michael said to the table as he stood and reached for the jacket hanging from the back of his chair. There was no question of her sitting down with them for a drink.

“Why will we see them tomorrow?” she asked when they were out of earshot.

“We're all going to Estoril.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

“It's only just been fixed up.”

She didn't make too much of it. She wanted to see Estoril, after all.

 

iv

T
hey took the train west out of the city, with the sea beckoning through dusty windows.

It hadn't been easy to find a place to stay for the night, said Michael. The hotels and pensions were full to capacity, the richer refugees finding the most pleasant places in which to continue their lives in the most pleasant circumstances possible. They were booked into a backstreet pension. The main crowd, mostly pressmen and their girlfriends, were driving up; Alva was more than happy on the train. She and Michael had spent little enough time together lately, and the short journey would be a chance to be alone, with the prospect of a weekend break.

At Estoril the brightness almost knocked her off her feet. The wind was dry and hot. Dust swirled in the air. She caught a piece of grit in the eye, which streamed as she tried to blink it away. The beach was unremarkable, long and flat, the waves tinged with gray.

“Where are we meeting the others?” she asked.

“In the bar at the Hotel Palácio. The most glamorous hotel on the coast. Unless you're German, in which case you'd be at the Hotel do Parque.”

She reached for his hand as they walked along from the train station, and felt something close to carefree. She wasn't sure she was dressed for the Palácio, in a sprigged cotton dress and local sandals, but who cared?

The hotel was a white mausoleum in a manicured green garden. Palm trees swelled in the breeze. Six square pillars held up the covered entrance, on which flew flags of all nations. Inside were more columns, and chandeliers dripping light from cavernous ceilings. The Bartons had to ask for directions to the Bar Estoril and were shown to a long narrow room, paneled in wood and set with mirrors and French chairs and low tables. They moved like pieces in a game of chess across the black-­and-­white-­checkerboard floor to where Blake Curnow and Frank Ellis were sitting with two women and a man she hadn't met before.

Blake introduced his girl as Mary, and Frank's as Anita. Mary regarded them coolly, eyes intelligent behind tortoiseshell glasses. Anita, in contrast, had a sulky face, with fleshy lips that contorted into exaggerated shapes as she expressed her emphatic delight that they had made it; she was already drunk. The man was a British journalist, David something, who said he wrote for the
London Daily Mirror
. He was pleasant-­looking, his manner relaxed, a notch short of languorous even as he spoke of the British bulldog spirit and the evacuation of Dunkirk.

A new round of gin and tonics was ordered.

“How are you liking Lisbon?” the
Mirror
man asked Alva, in a tone that suggested she might have chosen it as part of the itinerary of a world tour.

“It's . . . interesting.”

“It certainly is. How's your Portuguese coming along?”

“Slowly, I'm afraid. But I don't think I'll be here long enough to invest in lessons.”

He missed her point. “It's not too difficult, you know. Not if you have Latin. Though you have to beware of the pitfalls, the old linguistic
faux amis
. When I arrived one of the first headlines I read stated categorically:
O Sr. Roosevelt está
constipado
, which seemed an unwarranted intrusion into the President's private life—­until I discovered it meant he had a cold.”

“That's funny,” said Anita, with another grimace.

“How long have you been here?” Alva asked David.

“Oh, decades—­that's what it feels like, at any rate. At least here there's no talk of prison camps or relief committees. It's all money and gambling stakes at the famous casino, though the waiting and watching are the same even for the wealthiest exiles filling empty days with fine food and wine and idle chatter. They get their news about onward transit delivered by telegram on silver trays. This place and the Hotel Inglaterra is Allied territory. The Hotel Atlântico and the Parque belong to the Germans.”

“What about the casino?”

“No-­man's-­land. I've never been so adept at reading upside down and listening in to other ­people's conversation.”

“I'm sure these new skills will stand you in good stead in the future.”

“We never stop learning, do we?”

Through the high windows of the bar, the gardens outside were green and inviting. The sun was high in the sky, and here they were huddled around a table in a paneled room.

“Doesn't anyone go to the beach in Estoril?” asked Alva.

“Everyone goes to the beach.”

Except us, she thought.

“It's good swimming,” went on David, again oblivious to her meaning. “All the languages of Europe can be heard down there. Though our customs are somewhat less welcome. I hope you haven't brought a two-­piece bathing costume.”

“As a matter of fact, I haven't. Why?”

“The Portuguese are in a moral panic. Two-­piece costumes for women, and topless trunks by men are decreed to be tantamount to nudism, and banned by the authorities.”

“I'll be sure to remember.”

“Do. Flouting the rules is a penal offense and a special force of police has been formed to enforce the ban.”

Two hours and too many gin and tonics later, the Bartons staggered down to the beach and fell asleep in their clothes on beds laid out for sunbathers.

T
hey awoke, out of sorts, to the scent of sardines grilling on charcoal fires on the beachfront. After several wrong turns, Michael succeeded in finding the small pension where he had booked a room for the night, and they bathed and changed into clean clothes.

An argument ensued about whether they would join the others for dinner as arranged. Michael wanted to; Alva did not. In the end, she prevailed, on the grounds that she had too often lately trailed after him as he went right ahead doing just what he wanted. For once, she said, she wanted them to do what
she
wanted.

And they did. They went to an inexpensive restaurant with a view of the sea, but somehow the accusations continued. Alva didn't know what possessed her, but she brought up the baby issue again—­why did the worst fights, the ones you normally treated like unexploded bombs, blow up at the very time when you were supposed to be relaxing and enjoying yourself? The barbs from both sides snagged deep. They hardly tasted their food, and the skirmishes continued until Alva wept.

“I'm going to the casino,” said Michael, his tone dangerously even. “I wanted you to come, but now you won't, will you?”

T
he casino was a low modern structure at the far end of a formal garden that sloped down to the sea. For the first time on Michael's arm, Alva felt unaccountably alone as they swept through the portico under neon letters that spelled out where they were; Michael seemed unaware, as was usual now, of her inner qualms. She had to skitter under her long dress to keep up with his forthright stride.

In the foyer, he seemed to check himself, which caught her feet in a tangle. Then he raised his head and pushed off again, like an actor making a stage entrance. She didn't rate a glance. It was the interior of the fabled casino he had come to see.

The glamour of the gaming room—­the men in black tie, the women ostentatiously decked in jewels—­was incidental to the green baize tables. A hubbub of conversation rose and fell against a ticktack of the ball in the roulette wheel and betting chips jostling under the croupier's rake. Wealthy refugees of all nationalities watched each other and the games in a joyless dance.

The Bartons made a tour of the room, Michael still gripping her arm stiffly. She was propelled past a card table where Blake Curnow and Mary were standing over David the British journalist. David sat behind a pile of chips; to his right a well-­upholstered Jew wearing a large diamond ring on his pinkie; to his left, a shark-­eyed man whose black uniform announced his status as a Nazi SS officer. Michael nodded toward Blake and Mary, but they did not linger.

Their circuit completed, Michael bought some gaming chips. Alva refrained from asking whether they could afford to lose them.

At a roulette table under a crystal chandelier, they watched the croupier swoop over the numbers, the turning of the wheel and the white fire of diamonds under the light. Alva could only guess who the players were: aristocratic women in silk, businessmen with too much to lose by staying where they came from, perhaps even members of royal families unknown to her. Others watched, slightly bored. Among the players were several more Nazi officers. Despite their everyday proximity in Lisbon, this was the first time Alma had been this close to them in a social setting. One of them, pork-­faced and bulky, was losing consistently, huffing and puffing; in defiance of his express orders, black refused to come up.

Michael gave her three roulette chips.

“Next game, put them on number twenty-­nine,” he whispered.

“I'll choose for myself.”

“No, you won't. Do it.”

The table was cleared. Alva hesitated.

She put the three chips on twenty-­nine.

Twenty-­nine lost. She knew it would.

Alva excused herself. “I have something in my eye again. I'm going to fix it in the ladies' room.”

She went out into the foyer and looked around, blinking, for a sign to the restrooms.

“A moment, please.”

Alva started.

The man had a curiously pale and featureless face. Even his eyes were a pale muddy gray with barely any lashes. The accent was impossible to place. “Tell your husband to make it less obvious next time.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just tell him.”

He leaned forward and spoke into her ear. “If he's going to get you involved, he has to be serious. Tell him he's been warned.”

She was about to tell him he was mistaken, when he clamped a hand on her upper arm. “No questions,” he said.

She had some questions all right, but they weren't for him.

I
n the days that followed, Michael brushed aside her concerns, claiming she must have been mistaken for someone else. Alva grew more adept at observing who was there and exactly what they were doing. She was no longer an innocent.
We'll be out of it soon,
she told herself.

It was October before it became clear that they weren't going anywhere.

“I thought you had our names on the Export Lines list,” she said, careful to control the anger that welled up.

“I thought about it, and decided we needed to stay.”

“Needed to stay? Needed, in what sense?”

“Alva, you just don't get it, do you? Look around for Christ's sake! It's all going on here—­if I can't make this work and get back into a senior position with the AP in Lisbon now, I'll be finished as a reporter. Rome, fled. Paris, fled. I can't leave again. This is my last chance!”

From a newsman's point of view, she could see that. At the time, she had seen their flights to safety in purely personal terms. “You should have discussed it with me, not just decided. I'm involved, too! But no, you just left me expecting we were going to get a departure date sooner or later. You said you'd been going to the Pan Am office!”

“Sending pieces back to New York, not booking our passage.”

“What?”

He gave her that look that said he was going to explain it very simply. “Because Portugal is neutral, the censors will not permit publication of anything that might be offensive to either side, or more pertinently, to their own government. So what we do is this—­we give copy to the air passengers taking the Pan Am clipper to New York. They deliver it for us, for a small fee, usually, though some may do it for love and liberty.”

She shook her head slowly.

“I thought you understood,” he said.

Alva caught the expression on his face, the one that husbands give their wives, or vice versa: bewilderment that what had once been affection had turned to such hatred. She had seen it between other ­people, and noticed it often here, where long waits made for short tempers within ­couples. She had never thought it would happen to them.

“Of course I understand,” she said quietly.

He pulled off his tie and hung it over the back of the chair. Turning his back to her, he went over to the washstand, and spoke to her reflection in the mirror. “You do want to stay here, don't you?”

“Sure. Do we have another option?”

“It's a fascinating place.” He was able to say it as if they were on the outside looking in, or watching a movie of the place as it gradually revealed its story. Not as active participants in tragic events.

She looked at the lines outside the shipping offices differently after that; they were not made up of ­people like them, after all. Michael was doing what he loved, and they were staying in Lisbon.