Winter in Madrid by C. J. Sansom Page B

clothes, Barbara watched the play of muscles in his broad chest and flat, ridged stomach. Sandy did no exercise and ate carelessly; it was a mystery how he kept his figure, but he did. He saw her studying him and smiled, that Clark Gable curl of the mouth to one side.
    ‘Want me to come back to bed?’
    ‘You’ve got to get off. What is it this morning, the Jews’ committee?’
    ‘Yes. There’s five new families arrived. With nothing but what they could carry from France.’
    ‘Be careful, Sandy. Don’t upset the régime.’
    ‘Franco doesn’t mean the anti-Jewish propaganda. He has to keep in with Hitler.’
    ‘I wish you’d let me help. I’ve so much experience dealing with refugees.’
    ‘It’s diplomatic stuff. Not a job for a woman; you know what the Spaniards are like about that.’
    She looked at him seriously; felt guilt again. ‘It’s good work, Sandy. What you’re doing.’
    He smiled. ‘Making up for all my sins. I’ll be back late, I’ve a meeting at the Ministry of Mines all afternoon.’ He moved away to his dressing table. At that distance, without her glasses, Sandy’s face began to blur. He laid the suit he had chosen over the back of a chair and padded off to the bathroom. She reached for a cigarette and lay smoking, as he splashed about. Sandy returned, shaved and dressed. He came back to the bed and bent to kiss her, his cheeks smooth now.
    ‘All right for some,’ he said.
    ‘It’s you that taught me to be lazy, Sandy.’ Barbara gave a sad half-smile.
    ‘What are you doing today?’
    ‘Nothing much. Thought I might go to the Prado later.’ She wondered whether Sandy might notice the slight tremor that came to her voice with the lie, but he only brushed her cheek with his hand before going to the door, his form turning to a blur again.
    S HE HAD MET Markby at a dinner they had given three weeks before. Most of the guests were government officials and their wives; when the women left the tables there would be deal-making among the men, perhaps a Falangist song. But there was a journalist as well, Terry Markby, a
Daily Express
reporter Sandy had met in one of the bars the Falange people frequented. He was a mousy, middle-aged man, his dinner jacket too large for him. He looked ill at ease and Barbara felt sorry for him. She asked what he was working on and he leaned close to her, lowering his voice. He had a heavy Bristol accent.
    ‘Trying to find out about these concentration camps for Republican prisoners. Beaverbrook wouldn’t have taken stories like that during the Civil War, but it’s different now.’
    ‘I’ve heard rumours,’ she replied guardedly. ‘But if anything likethat was going on I’m sure the Red Cross would have sniffed it out. I used to work for them, you see. In the Civil War.’
    ‘Did you?’ Markby looked at her with surprise. Barbara knew she had been even more gauche and clumsy than usual that evening, had heard the mistakes in her Spanish. When she went to the kitchen to check on Pilar her glasses had misted up and on coming out she had unthinkingly wiped them on her hem, catching a cross look from Sandy.
    ‘Yes, I did,’ she replied a little sharply. ‘And if a lot of people were missing they’d know.’
    ‘Which side of the lines were you on?’
    ‘Both, at different times.’
    ‘It was a bloody business.’
    ‘It was a civil war, Spaniard against Spaniard. You have to understand that to understand the things that happened here.’
    The journalist spoke quietly. On his other side Inés Vilar Cuesta was leading a loud demand from the ladies for nylon stockings.
    ‘A lot of people have been arrested
since
Franco won. Their families assumed they’d been shot, but a lot were taken to the camps. And there were a lot of prisoners taken in the war, people posted missing believed killed. Franco’s using them as forced labour.’
    Barbara frowned. She had tried for so long to tell herself that now Franco had won he should be supported in the