‘You came back? Not many doin’ that.’
‘Not many stayed either, Ernie.’
‘Nope. As soon as the shit started flying most of our brave colleagues upped and left for safer climes, afraid of taking a dying, I reckon.’
‘And you’re not?’
‘I’ve faced my demons in Italy in ’18.’
‘And,’ Tyler Alverson said, with heavy emphasis, ‘you have been trying to get yourself killed ever since.’
‘Charmed life, Tyler.’
‘Cal wants to know if the place will hold.’
Hemingway sat forward then, in a way so forceful a lesser man might have felt threatened.
‘If it does not, there won’t be many of Franco’s boys still standing. These madrilenos will fight for every stone. I have never met folk so fearless. It’s like they welcome death.’
There was a look in the American’s eye then, and it was remarkably like envy. Draining his glass, he hauled himself to his feet, waved a big hand, and left.
Cal Jardine was about to ask Hemingway why someone so successful was here in a war zone, but it died in his throat — it was a question he could have posed to himself. But the subject did surface later as they had a drink in a nearby bar called Chicote’s, where what journos were left in Madrid went to do what they did everywhere in the world, get plastered.
Big Ernie was a topic of conversation it was hard to avoid, so telling was his presence, and, it had to be admitted, there was a degree of envy for his success and reputation, though not from Tyler Alverson. He had come to Spain as soon as the war began with his latest woman and not his wife, another reporter called Martha, who was filing for Collier’s Weekly, though by all accounts it was a pretty stormy relationship in which they competed more than cooperated.
‘So where is she, this Martha?’ Cal asked, as the press corps started singing a filthy drinking song that would see one of them having to down something disgusting as a forfeit.
‘Time to go, Cal, this can only get worse. And Martha — covering somewhere else, which is what she does after every screaming match.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Having brought his map with him, Cal was able to bring it up to date, and it was not looking good despite Hemingway’s confidence. To the north, the Nationalists, having in fact secured two bridges, should have been able to push deep into the University Quarter, a place of little domestic occupation, large buildings and lots of wide open spaces, sweeping grassy areas, plazas and wide boulevards, perfect for an army intent on avoiding the heavily built-up areas.
The key now was to first contain them there and hold the rest of the bridges to the south, then to counter-attack, though he had no idea if the Republic had the means — it would not have done his thought process much good to have known neither did the Madrid military commanders. He had no concept of the depth of the fog surrounding operations but it took little time to find out.
Alverson took him out just before dawn, the time when any assaults planned overnight would be launched, and they joined a stream of fighters crossing the wide Segovia Bridge, passing through sandbagged emplacements equipped with heavy machine guns and mortars and, only just visible, a pair of heavily camouflaged T26 Russian tanks. Cal was very tempted to look them over out of professional interest, they being some of the best of their kind in the world and reputedly more than a match for the German Panzers, but there was no time.
The signs of actual battle were not long in showing: trees shattered by artillery fire, shell craters and even deeper, wider depressions where the Casa de Campo had been heavily bombed, and, incongruously, little bunches of flowers, no doubt marking where some relative had fallen, their bodies carried back into the city along with those merely wounded. Then there was the smell, of burning and cordite mixed with the gassy odour of churned-up ground, the only one seemingly out of place the strong stink of petrol.
Florencia, when they found her, looked haggard, her face not only grubby but having lost its total fullness, and with bags formed under her eyes. Nor did she possess her usual fountain of energy; the kiss she gave Cal Jardine was as weary as the clasp she managed with her arms, and that was not easy, she being festooned with grenades attached to her overalls with sewn-on thread. Tyler Alverson merely got a nod.
‘Who’s in command?’
She just shrugged and waved a lazy arm, this as the first distinctive phut came of a discharged mortar. Habit made Jardine duck low, which got him a look of disdain from those around Florencia; he would find out later they had endured days of this. The shell passed overhead to land with a crump on the road that led to the bridge; hitting the metalled surface the explosion was made more deadly by the lack of absorption in the solid roadway.
The screams that arose were mixed; some from those caught in the blast, others shouting to get into the trees. Several more landed with a small radius behind them and Cal knew instinctively what was coming. The mortar team were isolating those in the front line preparatory to an infantry assault, and overhead they could hear, too, the drones of approaching bombers. Reassuringly the higher pitch of fighter engines soon materialised as they tried to engage the bombers well away from the city centre.
‘Where’s the store of grenades?’ he asked; if that was what she was doing, he would work with her.
‘There are no more, querido. Me and my fellow dinamiteros are wearing the last of our supplies.’
‘Ammunition?’
‘Low,’ she sighed, ‘very low.’
‘Then you should withdraw across the bridge and get behind the machine guns.’
Some of the fire he knew so well resurfaced then, as she spat out, ‘Never.’
The mortar fire had not ceased but the range was steadily dropping, and as it did so he saw some of the men present throw back a canvas cover to reveal lines of dark-green wine bottles, each with a bit of protruding rag.
‘Petrol bombs, Cal,’ murmured Alverson.
Never having seen them used, Jardine was thinking that fuel would have been better used laying a trap for what was coming: a shallow trench into which it could have been poured, then set alight once the enemy was over it. There was no point in that now, for it was obvious these worker fighters were not going to wait to be attacked — they intended to go forward first.
‘Have the Regulares got automatic weapons, Florencia?’
‘A few, not many.’
‘Any spare rifles?’
She called to someone, another young woman, dark-skinned and just as weary, who came towards him with a Mauser and five rounds; even he understood the Spanish for ‘that is all’. Tactical sense made what they were planning to do — not just stand and fight, but attack — utter madness.
It was made worse by there seeming to be no directing brain; the decision to move seemed like one arrived at by some collective osmosis. No order was given, but a mass of fighters, hundreds in number, armed with what weapons they had and many of these unreliable petrol bombs, began to move, not with haste but with a palpable and steely determination, several lit torches flaring in the line, this while Alverson’s camera clicked.
‘Do you come forward, Tyler?’
‘No, Cal, this is as far as I go.’
A lone, young, male voice began to sing the anarchist song ‘A las Barricadas’, which Cal had heard in Barcelona, and it was soon taken up by others, rising to fill the woods through which they moved until it was being bellowed as they moved out into a large clearing, at the opposite side of which was the enemy, who, clearly under orders, fired off a rifle salvo. That it was effective made no difference; with a wild scream the mixed-sex militia just rushed forward.
Those with rifles were firing from the hip and shoulder on the move, those with bottles leaning into a torch-bearer to get lit their cloth fuses. As soon as they were aflame the run was at as much speed as they could muster, one or two crumpling at the knees as they were shot, others behind them picking up their dropped makeshift bombs, which had not broken on the soft uncut grass.