Outside he heard a woman’s voice, harsh, calling her children in. He put down the file and walked over to the window, looking through the washing to the shadowy courtyard, where children were playing. He opened the windows, the old familiar smell of cooking mingled with rot striking his nostrils. He could see the woman leaning out, she was young and pretty but wore a widow’s black. She called her children again and they ran indoors.

Harry turned back to the room. It was poorly lit and seemed full of gloomy corners, the places where pictures or posters had been removed standing out as ghostly squares. He wondered what had hung there. Pictures of Lenin and Stalin? There was something oppressive about the still, quiet atmosphere. The Communist would have been taken after Franco occupied Madrid, hauled away and shot in a cellar probably. Harry switched on the light but nothing happened. The light in the hall was the same; probably a power cut.

He had been uneasy about spying on Sandy but now he felt a growing anger. Sandy was working with Falangists, people who wanted to make war against England. ‘Why, Sandy?’ he asked aloud. His voice in the silence startled him. He felt suddenly alone. He was in a hostile country, working for an embassy that seemed to be a hotbed of rivalries. Tolhurst couldn’t have been friendlier but Harry guessed he would be reporting his impressions of him to Hillgarth, taking pleasure in being in the know. He thought of Hillgarth telling him to treat this as an adventure, and wondered, as he had wondered from time to time during his training, if he was the right man for this job, if he was up to it. He had said nothing about his doubts: it was an important job and they needed him to do it. For a second, though, he felt panic clutch at the corners of his mind.

This won’t do, he told himself. There was a radio on a table in the corner and he switched it on. The glass panel in the centre lit up; the power must be back on. He remembered when he was at his uncle’s, on holiday from Rookwood, playing with the radio in the sitting room in the evening. Twiddling the dial, he would hear voices from far-off countries: Italy, Russia, Hitler’s harsh screech from Germany. He had wished he could understand the voices that came and went, so far away, interrupted by swishes and crackles. His interest in languages had begun there. Now he twiddled the dial, looking for the BBC, but could find only a Spanish station playing martial music.

He wandered through to the bedroom. The bed had been freshly made up and he lay down, suddenly tired; it had been a long day. Now the playing children had gone he was struck again by the silence outside, it was as though Madrid lay under a shroud. An occupied city, Tolhurst had said. He could hear the blood hissing in his ears. It seemed louder in his bad one. He thought of unpacking, but let his mind drift back, to 1931, his first visit to Madrid. He and Bernie, twenty years old, arriving at Atocha station on a July day, rucksacks on their backs. He remembered emerging from the soot-smelling station into blazing sunlight, and there was the red-yellow-purple flag of the Republic flying over the Agriculture Ministry opposite, outlined against a cobalt-blue sky so bright he had to screw up his eyes.

AFTER SANDY FORSYTH left Rookwood in disgrace, Bernie returned to the study and his friendship with Harry resumed: two quiet, studious boys working for their Cambridge entrance. Bernie tended to keep his political views to himself in those days. He made the rugby XV in his last year and enjoyed the rough, speedy brutality of the field. Harry preferred cricket; when he made the first eleven it was one of the high points of his life.

Seven people from that year’s sixth form sat the Cambridge entrance. Harry came second and Bernie first, winning the £50 prize donated by an Old Boy. Bernie said it was more money than he had ever imagined seeing, let alone owning. In the autumn they went to Cambridge together but to different colleges and their paths diverged, Harry mixing with a serious, studious set and Bernie off with the socialist groups, bored with his studies. They still met for a drink now and then but less often as time passed. Harry hadn’t seen Bernie for over a month when he breezed into his rooms one summer morning at the end of their second year.

‘What’re you doing these hols?’ he asked once Harry had made tea.

‘I’m going to France. It’s been decided. I’m going to spend the summer travelling around, trying to get fluent. My cousin Will and his wife were going to come to start with, for their holidays, but she’s expecting.’ He sighed; it had been a disappointment and he was nervous of travelling alone. ‘Are you going to work in the shop again?’

‘No. I’m going to Spain for a month. They’re doing some great things there.’ Harry was reading Spanish as a second language; he knew the monarchy had fallen that April. A Republic had been declared, with a government of liberals and socialists dedicated, they said, to bringing reform and progress to one of Europe’s most backward countries.

‘I want to see it,’ Bernie said. His face shone with enthusiasm. ‘This new constitution’s a people’s constitution, it’s the end for the landlords and the church.’ He looked at Harry thoughtfully. ‘But I don’t really want to go to Spain alone, either. I wondered if you’d like to come. After all, you speak the language, why not go and see Spain too, see it first hand instead of reading dusty old Spanish playwrights? I could come to France first if you don’t want to be on your own,’ Bernie added. ‘I’d like to see it. Then we could go on to Spain.’ He smiled. Bernie was always persuasive.

‘Spain’s pretty primitive, though, isn’t it? How will we find our way around?’

Bernie pulled a battered Labour Party card from his pocket. ‘This’ll help us. I’ll introduce you to the international socialist brotherhood.’

Harry smiled. ‘Can I charge an interpreter’s fee?’ He realized that was why Bernie wanted him to come and felt an unexpected sadness.

THEY TOOK the ferry to France in July. They spent ten days in Paris then travelled slowly south by train, spending their nights in cheap hostels along the way. It was a pleasant, lazy time, and to Harry’s pleasure their easy companionship from Rookwood returned. Bernie pored over a Spanish grammar, he wanted to be able to speak to the people. Some of his enthusiasm for what he called the new Spain rubbed off on Harry and they were both staring eagerly out of the window as the train pulled into Atocha that hot summer morning.

Madrid was exciting, extraordinary. Walking round the Centro they saw buildings decorated with socialist and anarchist flags, posters for rallies and strike meetings covering the peeling walls of the old buildings. Here and there they saw burned-out churches, which made Harry shudder but Bernie smile with grim pleasure.

‘Not much of a workers’ paradise,’ Harry said, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. The heat was baking, a heat such as neither of the English boys had imagined could exist. They were standing in the Puerta del Sol, hot and dusty. Pedlars with donkey carts threaded their way between the trams and ragged shoeshine boys slumped against the walls in the shade. Old women in black shawls shuffled by like dusty, smelly birds.

‘Christ, Harry, they’ve had centuries of oppression,’ Bernie said. ‘Not least from the church. Most of those burned-out churches were full of gold and silver. It’s going to take a long time.’

They got a room on the second floor of a crumbling hostal in a narrow street off the Puerta del Sol. On the balcony opposite theirs a couple of prostitutes often sat resting. They would call bawdy remarks across the street, laughing. Harry would redden and turn away, but Bernie shouted back at them, saying they’d no money for such luxuries.

The heat continued; during the hottest part of the day they stayed in the hostal, lying on their beds with their shirts open, reading or dozing, savouring every tiny breeze that wafted through the window. Then in the late afternoon they would walk in the city before spending the evenings in the bars.