John Masters (38 page)
Authors: The Rock
She put out her hand to him and said, "Tell me later..."
But later he said little, only looked at her with his pale blue eyes glowing and his bony face fallen into a deep calm. When it was nearly time for him to go, he said, "Will you see me at the dinner? There's to be a guard of honor outside the Convent. I'm the left flank man, front rank."
"I'll come," she said, "just to see you all."
Carlos Firpo's right arm was in plaster of Paris from the elbow down, the whole carried in a sling. He was even more frantic than usual, as though his brush with violent death had reemphasized the real values of his life.
Later, he was more subdued. "Smashed my arm," he said, over and over. "A shell splinter, it was. Another killed the captain. Blew his brains all over me. And that dirty, stuck-up swine Torrenti's refused to give me a pension or a bonus or anything."
"What can have happened?" she asked. "Juana, the champagne."
"Someone got paid a lot of money, that's what happened," he said bitterly. "Probably Torrenti. He's capable of anything."
"But it was his ship."
"Yes, but... I don't know. Father O'Callaghan says it was the Freemasons fixed it, because everyone on the ships, and in the syndicate, is Catholic.... And I promised Luisa, that's my wife's sister, twenty pounds for a wedding present, and now I can't give her two. And she's having hysterics because the fellow she's marrying, this Private Tamlyn, is not going to England at all but staying here as a dockyard policeman. Well, that'll be worth something to the family, I suppose."
He got up moodily. The effects of the sexual therapy were wearing off fast.
"And your wife?" she asked.
"Bad backache, she has. And very upset, because the woman who was working for us left. Maria Lopez. She and I were on the bed. Her husband came in, unexpected, from the dockyard. My wife came back at the same time, because she'd forgot something. So..."
"I understand perfectly. You could find another cleaning woman. Uglier or older, perhaps?"
"Yes. But I can't afford it any more."
Tomas Lopez sat on the edge of the straight-backed chair drinking red wine, very correct in his gray cotton suit and white shirt buttoned up, with no tie. "My wife, unfortunately, cut her nose quite severely. The end cut off, in fact. Only a few days ago. Yes, she is recovering, thank you."
He'd do that, she thought, the old Andalusian, Moorish way. There was a position to hold, a seat to be sat in, straight.
"The English Prince and Princess arrived yesterday for the dog show," he said. "The soldiers lined the route when they paid a call on the Governor. They are living on the royal yacht in the harbor. It is all done properly, with much
senorio."
"And the dog show? Are you still confident your Manolo will win?"
"I am confident, senorita. As you suggested, I paid Paco Santangel one hundred pesetas to inform me what was Don Pablo Larios' passion, or, as you might say, weakness; but after nearly a month he told me only that Don Pablo craved to own a full-blooded Arab stallion. I am not in a position to present Don Pablo with such a horse. That young man is, perhaps, a scoundrel, senorita."
She sighed and said nothing.
"In the end I gave Don Pablo a perfect yellow rose. I could see that he recognized in me a person who knows the correct values."
"Indeed yes."
"It will not influence his judgment of the dogs ... but it will cause him to look very carefully at Manolo. A man who could select so perfect a rose..."
"... would naturally have a perfect dog," she finished. "Precisely. Manolo is not perfect, but he is good. Very good. Indeed, his appearance and posture have changed, this is, improved, immensely in the past few weeks. Well, tomorrow at two thirty of the afternoon is the 'moment of truth' as they say in the bullring."
She refilled his glass. He lit a "black" cigarette and drew on it cautiously. "There has been a considerable scandal in Gibraltar over the arrest of Mr. Torrenti, a prominent merchant, the evening before last, in the house of a professional lady of La Linea. Many believe that the misfortune befell him because he shot a female Barbary partridge out of season, which is well known to be almost as fatal as catching the eye of our king, Don Alfonso." The shrewd eyes surveyed her. "It is said that the lady was yourself, though it has not been published."
"That is so," she said, nodding at the memory. The police had come while she was whipping him. She had wondered whether he would keep his appointment after the way she had beaten him the last time. If he failed to appear, she had only to apologize to the police. But he had come, begging for more whipping—"only let me loose when I ask you to."
"Father O'Callaghan says it is the Freemasons who caused his arrest, in order that he should not be able to dine with the English prince and princess, for now, it is understood, he has been requested to return his invitation."
When the police burst in, she recalled with pleasure, he had thought it was some exciting new continuation of the whipping that they were going to do. Then when they arrested him, he began to rave like a madman. She had to bury her face in the curtains and pretend her laughter was sobbing to see him shaking his fist, his potbelly quivering, his silky moustache puffing out. When they took him away, he could no longer speak.
"What was the charge against him, that the police should follow him and enter here? It must have been serious," Lopez said.
"Yes," she said. "It was smuggling. They found a packet of English cigarettes on him that he had smuggled through the frontier."
Lopez said, "A serious matter, indeed. It is certainly true, then, about the bad luck that will follow anyone who kills a Barbary partridge, for it was surely a very ill stroke of chance that reporters from the Gibraltar newspapers, and even the representative of Reuters, happened to be with the police when he was arrested."
"Yes," she said. "Otherwise he might have persuaded the police, on the way to the jail, that there had been a mistake."
"God preserve us all from such mistakes, Senorita Falcon," he said meaningly. He gave her money and the usual bottle of whisky. "I trust the police will not break in on account of this bottle, which certainly has not been seen by any customs officer."
"There is no chance of that, Senor Lopez," she said and led the way to the bedroom.
The day of the dog show dawned, waxed, waned. She heard nothing. She had no clients and went to bed early.
The clang of the front door bell awakened her. She sat up, wondering whether it could be day yet. But it was not. It was three o'clock in the morning. She heard Juana's shuffling feet, then distant murmuring. Shoes clattered up the marble stairs, the door burst open. She jumped out of bed, her arms wide. "Paco!"
Juana waddled in and lit the lamps, grumbling, "Send him away, senorita. Before he causes any more trouble."
He was wearing an expensive gray worsted jacket, incongruous over the patched blue cotton trousers. There was a big bulge inside the jacket. He dived in his hand and pulled out a fat, sleepy puppy. He pressed it into her hands. "A foxhound bitch," he said. "I stole it for you. It'll be a good guard dog when it grows up. Goodbye."
He was going. She grabbed his arm. "Paco!"
"Let him go," Juana said. "It'll be best."
"Paco, what are you doing? What do you mean, goodbye?"
"My Cabo won the dog show, because he's really a pup of the count's pedigreed bitch that I stole when I birthed her two years ago. So I won fifty pounds and I'm running away with Kitty, the count's daughter. She's waiting in the carriage outside."
"But ... but ..."
"The count's been appointed ambassador to Ethiopia. Tomas Lopez was arrested and fined five pounds for dog stealing, right in front of the princess, because his dog wasn't his but Torrenti's that he'd stolen and painted."
She sank onto the bed, looking at him as though he had come from another planet.
"We'll be married in Cadiz, then we're going to Peru. I'll come back when the excitement's died down. The count will want to see his first grandson. Then I'll be a
torero
...
El Gato Moreno!"
He pirouetted on his toes and ran out.
"Good riddance," Juana said. She bustled over and fluffed up the pillow. "You get back into bed."
She said, "The girl's going to have his baby."
"Naturally," Juana said. "The English girl, also, I wouldn't be surprised. He will leave them all over the world." Dolores felt pale and ill. Juana looked at her keenly. "You, too?"
Dolores nodded. "I'm sure."
"It was that
juerga.
You were drunk."
"Perhaps. But it might be anyone."
"Well, we can get rid of it"
"No, Juana. I'll keep it."
"You're mad!"
"Perhaps. Good night."
She had a good position near the front of the crowd opposite the Convent to watch the ceremonies preceding the great dinner. She was wearing black, with a heavy veil. The sergeant of the police next to her was one of the few people in the world who knew her and her whole history; but he did not recognize her under the veil.
In the hiss of the gas lamps she watched the redcoats march down, the band playing, and take up their positions to the left of the main entrance. She saw Private Tamlyn and thought that his wandering eye—his head and neck remained ramrod stiff throughout—detected her. In the crowd she saw Tomas Lopez and his wife, with a bandage over her nose; and Carlos Firpo, his arm in a sling, with his sour wife and depressed sister-in-law. And when the guests began to arrive she saw Father O'Callaghan, looking every which way to make sure his flock appreciated that he had been invited; and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Aboab, Jews, invited at the last moment to take the place of the Torrentis, unhappily indisposed; and Don Pablo Larios and Pepita, who were warmly applauded by all; and Lieutenant Colonel Lord Howard Kingsley and his thin, blond, hungry-looking lady.
Finally the sound of cheering rolled up Main Street from the direction of Casemates, and the Governor came out to stand under the arch outside the Convent. Beside him a redcoated, spike-helmeted sergeant held a velvet cushion, and on the cushion rested three huge, ancient keys, the Keys of the Fortress.
The royal carriage rolled up, and the crowd surged forward, cheering. Dolores was left against the wall. She pushed up her veil and stood on tiptoe, trying to see. The sergeant of police turned, stared, and said in a low voice. "What are you doing here, Leah Conquy? What concern of yours is such an affair as this?"
THE GREY DIPLOMATISTS
The Jewish year 5662-5696
AUC 2655-2689
A.D. 1902-1936
A.H. 1320-1355
Storm clouds were gathering over La Linea, over Gibraltar, over all Europe, the sun of a brilliant, selfish young century already fading. In the chanceries the candles burned late as the politicians wove and rewove the alliances for the "inevitable" conflict. In the shipyards arc lights sputtered and oxyacetylene torches glared twenty-four hours a day as ship after fighting ship joined the swelling navies.
Gibraltar showed its teeth in October, 1904, when battleships put out into the Atlantic to intercept a Russian fleet heading from the Baltic clear around the world to fight Japan. The Russians, steaming down the North Sea earlier, had fired on a number of British fishing vessels. Britain demanded apologies and compensation—and sent out the Gibraltar fleet to enforce its demands. The Russians, who must indeed have been stricken with panic to imagine that British trawlers were Japanese destroyers, quickly made amends, and Lord Charles Beresford steamed back to Gibraltar. The Russians sailed on to annihilation at Tsushima.
In January, 1906, the representatives of the major European powers met at Algeciras to divide up the Moroccan empire and so complete the absorption of all Africa except Ethiopia. The convention being arranged was a piece of skulduggery of dubious antecedents and more dubious promise. Its main purpose was to keep out Germany. In return for concessions in Egypt and elsewhere, England was to agree to a French takeover in Morocco, except that a part directly opposite Spain—and Gibraltar—should be allotted to the weakest and most ailing of the powers concerned—Spain. If it came to vote, Germany would stand almost alone, backed only by Austria and Morocco itself. The British plenipotentiary, Sir Arthur Nicolson, was grave and anxious. The proposals held enormous possibilities for future disaster. Still worried, he went over and spent the night in Gibraltar. Harold Nicolson tells in his biography of his father what happened:
The Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets were there —thirty battleships, innumerable cruisers, countless destroyers. He dined with Lord Charles Beresford upon the flagship. Those great grey shapes lay around him under the great Rock:
Illustrious, Indefatigable, Implacable, Indomitable.
Clearly there was no reason to be frightened of Count Tattenbach. [He] decided that at the very next meeting he would put things to the vote.
The battleships, which at that time many Englishmen called "grey diplomatists," had signed another treaty, and the Rock had witnessed it. The thoughtful observer would be tempted to quote Lord Rosebery's remark of half a generation earlier: "Till I saw Gibraltar I never fully realized why we are so hated in Europe."
The Edwardian period in Gibraltar itself was perhaps the finest heyday of snobbism. Queen Victoria had sent her third son, the Duke of Connaught, there for six months in 1875. The reason for his posting has escaped history, for he had no responsibilities and wasn't studying anything. As he was twenty-five and a bachelor one might suspect that the queen sent him away from some petticoated menace in London. The duke's elder brother, Edward, visited the Rock briefly as Prince of Wales and again the year after he was crowned. He dined with the governor and ordered that the name of the latter's official residence should be changed to Government House; it didn't seem right for a Governor to live in a Convent: all those nuns ... (The name was later changed back again).
Queen Alexandra came: King Alfonso XIII came to Algeciras (not to Gibraltar, that would have been too much for a Spanish king): the new Prince and Princess of Wales (King George V and Queen Mary) came.... The link between the upper echelons of Spanish and Gibraltar society was the Larios family, Spanish landowners and aristocrats who also owned estates and houses in Gibraltar. It was Pablo Larios and his wife who escorted the kings, queens, and princesses through the cork woods of Almoraima, it was he who introduced the Spanish gentry to polo, it was he who became Master of the Calpe Hunt in 1890 and was still master in 1906 when King Edward and King Alfonso honored it with their patronage, and its title was changed to the
Royal
Calpe Hunt. The exaltation in royalty-worshipping Gibraltar knew no bounds.
More prosaically, the water problem was at last overcome. It had been so bad that Nelson once came out from England with a warship loaded with nothing but water. Of old, convoys and fleets had to go over to Tetuan or Tangier to water. Jervis had inveighed furiously that he would eject all women from H. M. ships (many were then permitted on board) as
they would insist on washing.
Between 1898 and 1961, in three main spasms, thirteen reservoirs with a total capacity of 16,000,000 gallons were constructed. All but one of these are deep inside the Rock and are fed and serviced by a tunnel and railway of their own. Some of the water is collected on cemented-over outcrops of limestone on the west face, but the main catchment area is 34 acres of corrugated roofing material spread over the steep aeolian sand slope of the eastern side. It is this huge expanse of grayish white, the sheets screwed firmly into timbers driven into the sand, which every traveler from the east now sees before anything else of Gibraltar emerges from the haze.
Archaeological research continued, and the first formal scientific exploration of a Gibraltar cave was made by a Mr. Duckworth in 1910. He explored Cave S, at the top of the east face water catchment area, and found many bones and artifacts, confirming that Gibraltar is an inexhaustible mine of material for the study of early man in a certain definite and plainly limited environment. Later Gibraltar also attracted the attention of the father of modem archaeology, the Abbe Breuil, but he made no remarkable discoveries.
Smuggling continued, limited only by the primitive means then available—sailing cutters and a few steam pinnaces for sea work (although the invention and use of radio at sea was soon seen to provide an excellent means of communicating between the smugglers and the
Tabacalera
operatives so that unfortunate encounters between them might be avoided). On land, dogs wearing tobacco belts continued to trot back and forth across the neutral ground from the caves under the north face, where the tobacco was stored, to their waiting masters in La Linea, until, at the request of the Spanish authorities, a dogproof fence was built from sea to sea across the isthmus.
In 1914 Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo, and the lights began to go out over Europe. War began. Spain remained neutral, though her royalty and court had strong ties to both sides—the queen was English, the queen mother German—so Gibraltar did not have to face direct attack from the mainland. Gibraltar's situation made it an excellent place for gathering and "mating" of convoys and escorts, when that system of antisubmarine defense was introduced. But it had remarkably little effect on the German submarine campaign in the Mediterranean. The first U-boat passed through the strait in May, 1915, and from then on shipping losses in the Mediterranean were very heavy. Submarines came and went almost at will, and to cock a final snook, one of them surfaced off Trafalgar two days before the war ended and sank the battleship
Britannia.
The guns of Gibraltar were fired in anger for the first time since the Napoleonic Wars against submarines. One. spotted on the surface on December 31, 1915, was engaged and probably sunk by the Levant batteries on Windmill Hill; another was engaged in Gibraltar Bay during 1917 by the Devil's Gap Battery. Some say this submarine was sunk, some say it wasn't, some say it never existed. What is certain is that a number of shells ricocheted into "neutral" Spain, which protested. Spain had no cause for complaint, as her official class much preferred Germany to England, and several damaged U-boats had secretly been repaired in Spanish harbors.
The war ended in November, 1918, bringing a bad combination of circumstances for Gibraltar—the world was at peace but depressed. The British forces, particularly the navy, were ruthlessly cut down; and once again the value of Gibraltar had to be considered anew, for the four-year war had seen the birth, infancy, young, and early manhood of a new force, air power. When it began, pilots in fabric wings tied together with string fired pistols at each other, and strong headwinds caused the machines to go backward. When it ended, England had four-engine bombers capable of flying from London to Berlin and back, nonstop, with 4,000 pounds of bombs. Similar bombers could fly much more easily from Madrid, Mallorca, or Morocco to Gibraltar....
A postwar governor assured the populace that they had nothing to fear from aircraft. He had frequently sailed around the Rock in his little boat, he said, and all seafaring men would agree that the air currents were very treacherous and unreliable, far too much so to permit the operation of flying machines. Nevertheless, as the smelly things seemed to have come to stay, a landing strip would be cleared in the middle of the racecourse. This racecourse was on the disputed area between the north front and the sites of the forts of San Felipe and Santa Barbara. The Spanish said the land was not part of Gibraltar, it belonged to them. They had built the old forts that far back, as it was customary not to put up any defense work within gunshot of a fortress (they were well within gunshot, even when built: about 450 yards from the north face). They had permitted the British to use the land solely as an act of courtesy, first to build barracks for the care of fever cases after 1808, later for gardens and recreation purposes for the cooped-up garrison; but an airfield ... no! The British, naturally, said the land was theirs and always had been.
In the ruins of the old Europe, like poisonous glittering weeds, the tyrannies of Communism and Fascism flowered—Salazar, Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler....
Internal disease had wracked and rocked Spain throughout the nineteenth century. There is an old Spanish legend relating how God, when allocating the virtues and qualities to the nations, asked each patron saint what he wanted for his country. St. George asked sea power for England and got it; St. Denis, good food for France, and got it; but when it came to Spain's turn, Santiago wasn't there. He was off converting the heathen in Galicia (where some say he obviously never had a chance to finish the job). God sent a messenger to fetch him and meanwhile went on with the allocations. When Santiago arrived, panting, God asked him what he wanted for the Spanish people, and he replied, "Just one thing, Lord—good government." And God looked into his depleted sack and shook his head and said, "You can have the swiftest horses, the most passionate women, the bravest men, the clearest water, the most glorious sun, but what you ask ... never, never, never."
The nineteenth century was one long demonstration of that legend: anarchy, revolution, coup, countercoup, counterrevolution; the monarchy overthrown and a republic established in 1871; the republic overthrown in 1873; bloody civil wars between followers of the regular and the Carlist lines of succession from 1833 to 1837 and 1870 to 1876; a bomb thrown at Alfonso XIII's wedding coach, many killed, blood spattering his bride's face and dress; in the 1920's military disaster in Morocco against Abd-el-Krim and ignominious rescue by the French; a public clamor blaming the king, causing him to hand over power to a dictator, Primo de Rivera; the collapse of Primo de Rivera; the elections of 1931 won by left-wing parties who set up another republic; the flight of Alfonso and his family (his eldest son escaped through Gibraltar).
The left-wing parties in the Republic held a paper-thin national majority, which its actions did nothing to increase. It was beset by riots, separatism, risings by the still-further- left in Asturias and the gradual coalition of all the interests in Spain which it had made its implacable enemies.
On July 12, 1936, the right-wing leader Calvo Sotelo, who had consistently spoken out in Parliament against the regime, was murdered in Madrid by men of the Guardia Civil, acting on the orders of the government. Six days later the right rose from end to end of the country, and all that had been hidden, all that had been deeply felt but unspoken, five centuries of repression on one side and five years of personal insult and national and religious degradation on the other, burst out into civil war....