Days of Your Fathers (23 page)

‘The discipline of the Civil Guard is impeccable.'

‘I know it is. But they needn't look quite so grim.'

‘What are they supposed to be there for?'

‘To show the Ministry that you are not a man to be trifled with, my dear uncle.'

Two on the church. Two on Don Jaime's workshop. Four at the entrance to the town. Half a dozen appearing and disappearing around the Town Hall and the plaza. Tourists, if there had been any, would have whispered to each other of the iniquities of a police state, or, alternatively, have wondered from what threat of commotion a benevolent government was protecting them.

The citizens of Lazalaya were content to shrug their shoulders and speculate on the inanities which the security police must have reported to the Civil Governor. Don Baltazar, they said, ought to have stayed in his district instead of allowing his common sense to be corrupted by thirty years of law-courts and Madrid. Meanwhile the town's life continued imperturbably. In the Café Moderno the commander of the detachment of invaders occasionally joined Don Jaime and his friends at their accustomed table. In the Café Ventura turnover increased by twenty percent, since there were never less than four plainclothes security police consuming and offering liquor while they listened suspiciously to the old combatants of the Left.

‘You'll drive them into revolt, Jaime,' Gil said.

‘What are you talking about? They're getting more free drinks than they deserve, and have nothing to give away. The only reliable sources in Lazalaya are the Priest and the Mayor. And since they too know nothing, there's an end of it!'

‘There is always Kuchler. If he tells them about the shots, they'll grill me for a week.'

‘Kuchler will not be so disloyal to a friend. Besides, he considers you his agent.'

‘What the hell do you mean?'

‘He has organised an intelligence service. You have to
take your hat off to these Germans. The things they think of!'

‘Does he pay them?'

‘Yes, of course. But you're not in that class. He's got a waiter in the Moderno and another in the Ventura, two fishermen and Alonso Mejias and Enrique Jimenez.'

‘What on earth can they find to tell Kuchler?' Gil exclaimed.

‘What I pass on to them. They can remember it so long as they see Kuchler within a couple of hours. Double agents – that's what the cinema calls them! I have talent, and that's a fact,' the major added complacently. ‘It's all in this head. The Cofradia need know nothing more, and Father Miguel only a little. On Wednesday Kuchler's partner is coming to visit the hotel site with a newspaper man from Hamburg. I shall manage them with the least possible disturbance to the authorities.'

‘Jaime, it would break my uncle's heart if he were sent to Africa. He likes being Civil Governor.'

‘May he enjoy it for many years! The Bishop and I have his interests always in mind.'

‘I think he'd prefer to look after them himself. Why doesn't Kuchler put off his friends until Lazalaya looks less like a garrison town on a Saturday night?'

‘He said they wouldn't know the difference, that they would just assume the town was well policed. Good! So they will call on me at the Town Hall at six o'clock. Nothing formal! Just to talk in private about the hotel!'

‘Can I help at all?'

‘Well, there's one thing I would ask of you. I have a job I promised to deliver, and I cannot arrive till nearly six. I shall leave the Vehicle in the lane behind the Café Moderno. Would you drive it back to the workshop and join me in my office afterwards? The truth is that the Vehicle is a little old-fashioned, and I would not like this newspaperman to think that the Mayor of Lazalaya cannot afford a Mercedes.'

‘Of course. With pleasure.'

The request was reasonable, for few of the mayor's cronies could drive. Still, it seemed to Gil, as he strolled
out of the back door of the Moderno a little after six on the Wednesday, that there was really no occasion for Kuchler's party, even if on a conducted tour of the town, to pass down the lane alongside the garbage cans, shrimp heads and vintage lavatories of the café, and no grounds for assuming – unless Kuchler mentioned it – that the Vehicle belonged to the mayor.

Lazalaya was sunk in its evening peace. The detachment of the Civil Guard had tactfully removed itself to the courtyard at the back of the Town Hall. On the balcony of the mayor's office, which overlooked the plaza, a German flag had, as a courtesy, joined the Spanish. It gave a slight air of fiesta – enough at any rate for the respectable clients of the Moderno to be a little hurt that Don Jaime had not arranged a civic reception and free drinks.

Gil entered the Vehicle, looked for the switch, remembered that motor-cycles did not have one and pulled an ornate little door knob of twisted wrought-iron spirals which replaced the original kick-start. The two cylinders shattered the evening with a succession of appalling backfires. Timing? A stuck valve? He cautiously opened the throttle lever. The result was a devastating explosion, as full and loud as that of a mortar, as the silencer shot off into the gutter. He tried to close the throttle. The lever had jammed. He had to use his pocket knife to loosen the holding screw. Meanwhile the machine gun, its crew having recovered from that near miss of the mortar, continued the battle.

The engine did occasionally produce a backfire or two in starting, so that Gil, sweating in the blessed silence, assumed that he hadn't known how to control it. Then at last it occurred to him why that jesuitical crook of a mayor had asked him to put away the Vehicle. Round the corner from the plaza bounced the assault car of the Civil Guard, flanked by motorcycles whose riders leaped off and took cover in the doorways, their sub-machine guns commanding the lane. Gil left the driving seat with his hands up.

Recognising both the Vehicle and its occupant, the Guards sheepishly gathered round and were joined by the customers of the Moderno, pouring out of the back door.

‘I am sorry,' Gil said. ‘I was trying to make it start.'

The sergeant in charge of mechanical transport examined engine and dashboard with professional interest.

‘Very original,' he remarked. ‘As I expected, the silencer has fallen off.'

‘You'll find it down the lane somewhere.'

The sergeant recovered the silencer and easily replaced it, since it was attached to the exhaust pipe by a simple screw thread. Gil, watching, realised that Jaime must have given it a mere half turn, and he was pretty sure that it was bigger and more eaten by rust than the usual silencer. The mayor had calculated his every move in advance and, as likely as not, those of the Civil Guard as well.

The sergeant slung his sub-machine gun across his chest, entered the Vehicle and pulled the starter. The result was a booming report more menacing than any Gil himself had produced. The thread held, but the rusty end of the silencer flew screaming into the Moderno garbage cans. No one listening in the Town Hall could have any doubt that a field gun was now engaged in the local battle. Before the sergeant could close the throttle, the artillery was promptly answered by those intrepid machine gunners.

The Civil Guard stood by their motorcycles and the assault car awaiting orders. When on duty they were not supposed to laugh. They regarded the Vehicle with some embarrassment as if it had uncivically broken wind. The call to action was welcome. Far outside and to the east of the town something blew up which was certainly not a mere car engine. The detachment hurtled out of the lane, sirens shrieking, round the plaza and away into open country.

Gil hurried up the lane after them and entered the Town Hall by the side door. Running up the stairs to the mayor's office, he found Alonso Mejia and Enrique Jimenez, the two town policemen, wearing their best uniforms and white gloves, on guard in the anteroom. They saluted and opened the door of the office.

The mayor and his party were grouped around the window. Dust on Jaime's knees and on the prominence of his waistcoat suggested that he had flung himself on the
floor of the balcony at the outbreak of hostilities. The newspaperman was behind the inadequate protection of the fine white tablecloth on which were drinks and an excellent variety of
tapas
. Kuchler and his partner were sheltered by the stout pillars which framed the window, and, as befitted old combatants, still held their glasses.

Over the tumbled red roofs of the town a column of smoke could be seen rising from the Villanueva estate, somewhere near the far angle of the enclosure. The low sun in the west, brilliantly lighting their dark greens on one side of the wall and the rusty scrub on the other, made the mist of dust and smoke in the middle look immense and impenetrable.

Don Jaime sympathetically approached the stricken landowner.

‘On behalf of the citizens of Lazalaya I offer you my condolences, assuring you, my dear Count, that the damage will be made good as soon as the Government regains control.'

This was the last straw. Jaime must be suffering from the paranoia of power. He couldn't possibly get away with it, however many bishops were in the background. The Vehicle – well, that had been clever. No one could maintain that the racket had been due to anything but a too individual system of engineering; and, if anyone did, he would hesitate to insist on it for fear of showing up the Civil Guard as impulsive fools. But this outrage would call for the immediate intervention of Madrid.

Kuchler quickly explained to his partner, who spoke no Spanish, the identity and social significance of Gil. Both then shook his hand with good German comradeship and emotion. The partner remained nameless and unreal as a figure in a nightmare. He had an obstinate, round, still face. Beer and money had both contributed to his shape. Nothing belonged to daily life at all except alarm at the probable future.

‘I hope that you will not allow this to affect your plans,' Gil said, more from a vague intention of covering himself than from cunning.

‘A symbol!' Jaime broke in heartily. ‘The wall around the Villanueva estate is a symbol like the police. It is of no importance!'

The Press had rejoined the party, and was making up for the interruption in the flow of hospitality. It was very properly inquisitive. The mayor willingly developed his theory of the symbols which enraged the Left. He protested that the hotel could not be included among them.

‘You do not believe me?' he asked rhetorically. ‘Well then, enquire of our humble citizens! Constables Jimenez and Mejias, now guarding our door in peace and with devotion, are well known to Senor Kuchler as public servants of sturdy and independent opinion whose inside knowledge of our little town is unsurpassed. We will have them in and you shall talk to them freely!'

He flung open the solid door to the anteroom and called genially for the pair. The outer door to the passage was slightly open. There was no Jimenez, no Mejias, only a splattering of blood upon the wall and an ugly gobbet on the floor. At the mayor's exclamation of horror, the four rushed into the anteroom.

‘Quick! Quick!' Jaime shouted, locking the outer door. ‘Here in Lazalaya we allow no scandals. All is quiet. All must always be quiet.'

He seized the tablecloth, napkins and soda syphon, and began feverishly to squirt and mop. Gil added a bottle of white wine to the pink pool. Whatever Jaime was up to, the risk was outrageous. It was urgent that the mess should vanish whether it came from the constables or, as was more likely, the pork butcher. And in any case where were they and how could they vanish for good without enquiry?

Silent and furious, he worked with Jaime, hurling the soiled linen into a cupboard. Kuchler and his partner stood by, looking very pale. The newspaper correspondent added his sandwiches and free drinks to the mess.

In three minutes from the mayor's shout of alarm no sign of the tragedy remained and the doors were open. The anteroom gave the impression that someone carrying a tray had tripped, but of what he had spilt there was no evidence.

Gil tipped down his throat the last glass which remained in his scrubbing bottle. Kuchler's partner and the journalist, though still belonging to nightmare, came back into focus. Their faces were lard-white and expressionless. They asked if they might, immediately, go down to their car. Jaime, with polite protests, accompanied them as if nothing had happened, leaving Gil and Kuchler together in his office.

‘Those two poor fellows!' Kuchler cried. ‘So harmless! So good-natured! Why should they be just a symbol? Revolution I can understand, but not this cold-blooded assassination. And in another month they would have retired on pension!'

‘Perhaps the assailants were wounded,' Gil babbled. ‘Perhaps Mejias and Jimenez have followed them …'

He knew very well that it didn't matter what he said, or Jaime would never have left him alone with Kuchler.

‘They told me in private that they were in fear of their lives,' Kuchler said. ‘I even warned Don Jaime.'

‘Well, they have lasted a long time for Lazalaya,' Gil replied with some obscure intent of comfort. ‘What did Jaime say?'

‘He said they were devoted churchmen and always prepared to meet their end. You are – excuse me – so callous a people!'

‘Sometimes we cannot find words for what we think,' Gil said, wandering helplessly off towards the bottles on the floor.

‘You can find plenty for what you don't think,' Kuchler retorted with the first flash of irony Gil had ever heard from him. ‘I cannot blame you or Don Jaime, but I have been grossly deceived by the Ministry of Tourism who must have known the conditions here.'

‘You are going to complain to them? Wouldn't it be unwise?'

‘Naturally I shall have to be very careful. I do not want to spoil my chances of selling the land to some Englishman or Dutchman who does not know the country as I do.'

It was now or never. Gil doubted the power of the Little
Brothers to keep him out of gaol, but nobody else had any interest in trying.