the alley. It was dusk: after the first few yards he would not be an easy target.
The gendarme reached into the car and grasped Lloyd’s arm, holding him as he got out and stood up. The second one got out immediately behind Lloyd. The opportunity was not good enough.
But why had they brought him here?
They walked him into the kitchen. A chef was beating eggs in a bowl and an adolescent boy was washing up in a big sink. One of the gendarmes said: ‘Here’s an Englishman. He calls himself Leandro.’
Without pausing in his work, the chef lifted his head and bawled: ‘Teresa! Come here!’
Lloyd remembered another Teresa, a beautiful Spanish anarchist who had taught soldiers to read and write.
The kitchen door swung wide and she walked in.
Lloyd stared at her in astonishment. There was no possibility of mistake: he would never forget those big eyes and that mass of black hair, even though she wore the white cotton cap and apron of a waitress.
At first she did not look at him. She put a pile of plates on the counter next to the young washer-up, then turned to the gendarmes with a smile and kissed each on both cheeks, saying: ‘Pierre! Michel! How are you?’ Then she turned to Lloyd, stared at him, and said in Spanish: ‘No – it’s not possible. Lloyd, is it really you?’
He could only nod dumbly.
She put her arms around him, embraced him, and kissed him on both cheeks.
One of the gendarmes said: ‘There we are. All is well. We have to go. Good luck!’ He handed Lloyd his canvas bag, then they left.
Lloyd found his tongue. ‘What’s going on?’ he said to Teresa in Spanish. ‘I thought I was being taken to jail!’
‘They hate the Nazis, so they help us,’ she said.
‘Who is
‘I’ll explain later. Come with me.’ She opened a door that gave on to a staircase and led him to an upper storey, where there was a sparsely furnished bedroom. ‘Wait here. I’ll bring you something to eat.’
Lloyd lay down on the bed and contemplated his extraordinary fortune. Five minutes ago he had been expecting torture and death. Now he was waiting for a beautiful woman to bring him supper.
It could change again just as quickly, he reflected.
She returned half an hour later with an omelette and fried potatoes on a thick plate. ‘We’ve been busy, but we close soon,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
He ate the food quickly.
Night fell. He listened to the chatter of customers leaving and the clang of pots being put away, then Teresa reappeared with a bottle of red wine and two glasses.
Lloyd asked her why she had left Spain.
‘Our people are being murdered by the thousand,’ she said. ‘For those they don’t kill, they have passed the Law of Political Responsibilities, making criminals of everyone who supported the government. You can lose all your assets if you opposed Franco even by “grave passivity”. You are innocent only if you can prove you supported him.’
Lloyd thought bitterly of Chamberlain’s reassurance to the House of Commons, back in March, that Franco had renounced political reprisals. What an evil liar Chamberlain had been.
Teresa went on: ‘Many of our comrades are in filthy prison camps.’
‘I don’t suppose you have any idea what happened to Sergeant Lenny Griffiths, my friend?’
Teresa shook her head. ‘I never saw him again after Belchite.’
‘And you . . . ?’
‘I escaped from Franco’s men, came here, got a job as a waitress . . . and found there was other work for me to do.’
‘What work?’
‘I take escaping soldiers across the mountains. That’s why the gendarmes brought you to me.’
Lloyd was heartened. He had been planning to do it alone, and he had been worried about finding the way. Now perhaps he would have a guide.
‘I have two others waiting,’ she said. ‘A British gunner and a Canadian pilot. They are in a farmhouse in the hills.’
‘When are you planning to go across?’
‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘Don’t drink too much wine.’
She went away again and returned half an hour later carrying an old, ripped brown overcoat for him. ‘It’s cold where we’re going,’ she explained.
They slipped out of the kitchen door and threaded their way through the small town by starlight. Leaving the houses behind, they followed a dirt track steadily uphill. After an hour they came to
