Antonio shrugged. ‘They’ve closed the Jesuit schools, but there aren’t enough new ones. The old story, the bourgeois parties won’t tax the rich to pay for them.’

A little way off there was a crack, like a car backfiring. The sound was repeated twice, closer. A youth no older than Bernie and Harry ran out of a side street. He wore flannels and a dark shirt, expensive clothes for Carabanchel. His face was terrified, wide-eyed, gleaming with sweat. He tore away down the street, disappearing into an alley.

‘Who’s that?’ Harry asked.

Antonio took a deep breath. ‘I wonder. That could be one of Redondo’s fascists.’

Two more young men appeared, in vests and workmen’s trousers. One held something small and dark in his hand. Harry stared open-mouthed as he realized it was a gun.

‘Down there!’ Antonio called, pointing to where the youth had fled. ‘He went down there!’

‘¡Gracias, compadre!’ The boy raised his gun in salute and the two sped away. Harry waited breathlessly for more shots but none came.

‘They were going to kill him,’ he said in a shocked whisper.

Antonio looked guilty for a moment, then frowned. ‘He was from the JONS. We have to stop the Fascists taking root.’

‘Who were the others?’

‘Communists. They’ve sworn to stop them. Good luck to them, I say.’

‘They’re right,’ Bernie agreed. ‘Fascists are vermin, the lowest of the low.’

‘He was just a boy running,’ Harry protested. ‘He didn’t have a gun.’

Antonio laughed bitterly. ‘They’ve got guns all right. But the Spanish workers won’t go down like the Italians.’

The tram arrived, the ordinary everyday jingling tram, and they got aboard. Harry studied Antonio. He looked tired; he had another shift at the brickworks tonight. He thought sadly, Bernie’s got more in common with him than with me.

HARRY LAY ON the bed, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He remembered how, on the train back, Bernie said he wasn’t going back to Cambridge. He’d had enough of living cut off from the real world and was going back to London, where the class struggle was. Harry thought he would change his mind, but he didn’t; he didn’t return to Cambridge in the autumn. They exchanged letters for a while but Bernie’s letters talking about strikes and anti-fascist demonstrations were as alien in their way as Sandy Forsyth’s about the dogtracks had been, and after a while that correspondence too petered out.

Harry got up. He felt restless now. He needed to get out of the flat, the silence was getting on his nerves. He washed, changed his shirt, then descended the dank staircase.

The square was still quiet. There was a faint smell he remembered, urine from malfunctioning drains. He thought of the picture on his wall, the romantic veneer it gave to poverty and want. He had been young and naive in 1931, but his attachment to the picture had stayed over the years, the young girl smiling at the gipsy. In 1931 he had thought the scene in the picture would soon be in the past; like Bernie, he had hoped Spain would progress. Yet the Republic had collapsed into chaos, then civil war, and now fascism. Harry circled, pausing at a baker’s shop. There was little on display, only a few barras de pan, none of the little sticky cakes the Spaniards loved. Bernie had eaten five one afternoon then had a paella in the evening and been spectacularly sick.

A couple of workmen passed Harry, giving him quick hostile glances. He was conscious of his well-cut jacket, his tie. He noticed a church at the corner of the square; it had been burned out, probably in 1936. The ornate facade still stood but there was no roof; the sky was visible through weed-encrusted windows. A big notice in bright crayon declared that Mass was said at the priest’s house next door, and confessions heard. ¡Arriba España!, the notice concluded.

Harry had his bearings now. If he headed uphill he should reach the Plaza Mayor. On the way was El Toro, the bar where he and Bernie had met Pedro. A Socialist haunt once. He walked on, his footsteps echoing in the narrow street, a welcome evening breeze cooling him. He was glad he had come out.

El Toro was still there, the sign of a bull’s head swinging outside. Harry hesitated a moment then walked in. It had not changed in nine years: bulls’ heads mounted on the walls, old black-and-white posters yellow with nicotine and age advertising ancient bullfights. The Socialists had disapproved of bullfighting but the landlord’s wine was good and he was a supporter so they had indulged him.

There were only a few patrons, old men in berets. They gave Harry unfriendly stares. The young, energetic landlord Harry remembered, darting to and fro behind his crowded bar, was gone. In his place stood a stocky middle-aged man with a heavy square face. He tipped his head interrogatively. ‘¿Señor?’

Harry ordered a glass of red wine, fishing in his pockets for the unfamiliar coins embossed, like everything else, with the Falangist yoke and arrows. The barman set his drink before him.

‘¿Alemán?’ he asked. German?

‘No. Inglés.’

The barman raised his eyebrows and turned away. Harry went and sat at a bench. He picked up a discarded copy of Arriba, the Falange newspaper, the thin paper crinkling. On the front page a Spanish border guard shook hands with a German officer on a Pyrenean road. The article spoke of eternal friendship, how the Führer and the Caudillo would decide the future of the Western Mediterranean together. Harry took a sip of the wine; it was harsh as vinegar.

He studied the picture, the breathless celebration of the New Order. He remembered telling Bernie once that he stood for Rookwood values. He had probably sounded pompous. Bernie had laughed impatiently and said Rookwood was a training ground for the capitalist elite. Maybe it was, Harry thought, but it was a better elite than Hitler’s. Despite everything, that was still true. He remembered the newsreels he had seen of the things that happened in Germany, elderly Jews cleaning the streets with toothbrushes amidst laughing crowds.

He looked up. The barman was talking quietly to a couple of the old men. They kept glancing at him. Harry forced himself to drain his glass and got up. He called ‘Adiós,’ but there was no reply.

There were more people about now: well-dressed, middle-class office workers making their way home. He passed under an archway and stood in the Plaza Mayor, the centre of old Madrid, of festivals and pronunciamientos. The two big fountains were dry but there were still cafes round the broad square, little tables outside where a scattering of office workers sat with coffees or brandies. Even here, though, the shop windows were half empty, paint flaking from the ancient buildings. Beggars huddled in some of the ornate doorways. A pair of civiles circled.

Harry stood irresolutely, wondering whether to have a coffee. The street lights were starting to come on, weak and white. Harry remembered how easy it was to get lost in the narrow streets, or trip in a pothole. A couple of the beggars had risen and were walking towards him. He turned away.

As he left the square he noticed that a woman walking ahead of him had stopped dead, her back to him: a woman in an expensive-looking white dress, red hair covered with a little hat. He stopped too, astonished. Surely it was Barbara. That was her hair, her walk. The woman began walking again, turning rapidly down a side street, moving quickly, her figure fading to a white blur in the dusk.

Harry ran after her, then stood irresolute at the corner, unsure whether to follow. It couldn’t be Barbara, she couldn’t still be here. And Barbara would never have worn clothes like that.