‘Don’t you worry, Cal, I will take care of your gal.’
‘That’s what worries me, Tyler.’
In truth, it was not the American who worried him but Florencia herself; she thought herself immune from harm and she would, regardless of what he said, want to be in the forefront of the fighting, doing battle alongside her comrades, many of whom, as he had seen in Barcelona, were like her, young women. He had tried to lecture her upstairs about taking care and she had responded with her customary dismissals and a confidence not in the least dented by what she had experienced up till now.
‘We will beat them into the dust, querido!’
It had been impossible not to laugh, and there was no derision in it either. She just looked so damned beautiful in her fighting overalls, with the heavy pistol at her hip; blonde hair, golden olive skin, dark-brown eyes and that smile to melt his heart. If he had ever wondered why he was proposing to do what he was about to try and achieve, standing before him was the answer.
He paid for the room for another week, then departed to the sound of air raid sirens and the citizens rushing for the shelters, which was followed by a snowstorm of leaflets which filled the sky. He only had to open a window to catch one and his schoolboy Latin aided him in reading the warning message to the people of Madrid, telling them to surrender or the Nationalist aviators would wipe them off the face of the earth.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Caballero’s stupid radio announcement of both the forthcoming assault and the intended response had made the road situation ten times worse; anyone who had hung on in the hope that things would improve was on the road, as well as a suspicious number of armed men of fighting age who seemed to be more concerned with directing traffic out of the city than helping in the forthcoming battle.
It took three days to get to Barcelona and when he arrived he found the lower parts of the Ritz had been turned into some kind of workers’ canteen, which made the juxtaposition of those who ran the hotel with the stream of armed and hungry men who used the dining room a sight to see. The reception was still functioning as it had previously, as were most of the upper floors, and he had no trouble in either retrieving his luggage or getting a room.
As soon as he picked up a newspaper, it was obvious the Nationalist attack had pressed even further from the western suburbs towards the centre of Madrid, which made him worry – something to which he was not generally prone. He had been troubled during the Great War about a Zeppelin bomb dropping on his wife, but that had been a long time ago and as a proportion of risk it was small. Likewise he always carried concerns about any men he commanded, with the caveat that they were soldiers and knew the risks of combat.
Florencia was different; she would be in the anarchist front line wherever that was, and she was part of a force that lacked both the weapons and the knowledge to take on those they were fighting. Would the Russians support the anarchists? They might if the whole Madrid position was threatened but he would not put it past the communists to sacrifice their political rivals in the same way Manfred Decker had done to Laporta’s men on the borders of Aragón.
He had to put that aside, for gnawing on his concerns for her would serve no purpose, yet he found himself praying to any God that would listen to keep her safe, and he made a call to her family home, where at least he could converse with her mother and father, both naturally worried, to reassure them she was safe, even if he was far from certain he was right.
There was no news from Monaco, hardly surprising given the limited time since his return, which meant he would have to endure an agonising wait while events unfolded to the west. Having told the reception desk prior to leaving for Madrid that anything for Mr Maxim was for him, he did consider having a word with the concierge – a fellow accustomed to meeting the requests, however strange, of the hotel guests – to forward anything so addressed to the Florida Hotel.
That had to be put aside, given he could not risk it being sent on to a Madrid under what amounted to a siege. Quite apart from the difficulties of delivery, he had no idea if any kind of postal censorship was in place, nor of the nature of what he was going to receive, but he had to find out what was going on and he was not prepared to just rely on the Republican press.
His lifeline became the expensive radio he bought and sneaked into the hotel, as well as a map and the telephone. With his own set, albeit he kept the sound level low, he was able to listen to both sides as well as the BBC Empire Service. Their reporting of Spain was slim but it was good on the international ramifications, which amounted, it seemed, to who could outfib whom.
With the Spanish stations it was necessary to listen to repeat bulletins to make sure he was hearing it right, and naturally the news from the capital was mixed, being tinged with the needs of propaganda, but with difficult filtering it seemed there were limited gains for the insurgents.
But it was not all one-sided; cheering news came of dogfights over the city as Russian fighters, put up for the first time, surprised the Italian and German bombers – now dropping high explosives, not leaflets – though the figures for what they were reported to have shot down were not to be taken literally, and surely such biplanes had faced opposition from the faster Italian Fiats; certainly the Nationalists claimed so.
But, of course, there was a high degree of boasting on both sides – the Nationalists insisted they would celebrate some national saint’s day in Madrid, but that looked unlikely. The militias claimed they were more than a match for the Army of Africa and that was not possible. Exaggerated casualty figures he would expect as the norm and he made no suppositions on his map until he was sure of the truth. Yet what he saw was plain: the Republic was losing ground, even if there had been no collapse.
It came as a shock to hear that Caballero and his government had abandoned Madrid and fled to Valencia, a junta being appointed to defend the city, with names he had never heard of, and that made little impression as to them being good or bad appointments. Difficult as it was, the telephone brought some clarity, as he was able to have brief and shouted conversations with Alverson, who retired after each day’s fighting to the Florida Hotel.
As far as the American knew, over a crackly line, Florencia was alive. ‘But they are being beaten back time after time, Cal. Those poor bastards out there are fighting tanks with nothing but rifles and petrol bombs.’
‘What the hell is that?’
‘Something our kids learnt from the Moroccan Regulares. You fill a bottle with petrol, jam in a rag that soaks up enough to be flammable, and when a tank comes along you light the cloth and throw it, that is if a machine gun has not cut you down in the process. Damned effective, though, if you can hit your target.’
‘Do you know where Florencia is?’
‘On the western edge of the Casa de Campo the last time I saw her. Now I’ve got to go, there’s a queue for this phone line.’
‘I’ll try to call you tomorrow. Good luck.’
Cal went back to the maps; the Casa de Campo was an old royal hunting ground as big as Richmond Park, forming a buffer for the city as well as a lung, but being open country it would be hard to defend and, he suddenly realised, a place as dangerous for Alverson as it would be for any militia defender.
He was also wondering at the tactics. The desire to hold ground was understandable, especially since the main working-class district lay to the west of the River Manzanares right in the path of the Nationalists, and therefore the place where the majority of those defending the capital lived; they would not want to give up their homes.