THE DAY THE GERMAN PLANE crashed into the house in Vigo, Barbara and Bernie took a tram back to Barbara’s neat little flat off the Calle Mayor, sitting with their arms round each other, covered in dust. When they got home they sat side by side on her bed, holding hands.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Bernie asked. ‘You’re white as a sheet.’

‘It’s just a cut. The dust makes it look worse than it is. I should have a bath.’

‘Go and get one. I’ll make us something to eat.’ He gave her hand a squeeze.

By the time she had bathed he had prepared a meal. They ate chorizo and chickpeas at the little table. They were silent, both still shocked. Halfway through he reached across the table and took her hand.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I do love you. I meant it.’

‘I love you too.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I – I couldn’t believe you. When I was young – it’s so hard to explain …’

‘The bullying?’

‘It sounds a silly thing, but when it just goes on for years, that endless putting you down – why do children pick on people, why do they need someone to hate? They used to spit at me sometimes. For no reason, just because I was me.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘Why do you take their word for what you are? Why won’t you take mine instead?’

She burst out weeping. He came round the table and knelt beside her and held her tightly. She felt a sense of release.

‘I’ve only been with a man once,’ she said quietly.

‘You don’t have to now. I’d never want to do anything you didn’t. Ever.’

She looked into his eyes, deep dark olive. The past seemed to recede, washing away down a corridor in her mind. She knew it would return but for now it was far away. She took a deep breath.

‘I do want to. I have since the day I met you. Stay with me, don’t go back to Carabanchel tonight.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need to sleep now?’

‘No.’ She took off her glasses. He smiled and took them from her gently.

‘I like those,’ he said gently. ‘They make you look clever.’

She smiled. ‘So you didn’t just pick me out to convert to communism.’

He shook his head, his smile broadening.

SHE WOKE in the middle of the night to feel his fingers caressing her neck. It was dark, she could only make out the outline of his head but she felt his body against her.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ she whispered. ‘Not with you.’

‘I loved you the first day I met you,’ Bernie said. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you.’

She laughed nervously. ‘Like me? What does that mean?’

‘Alive, compassionate, sensual though you pretend not to be.’

Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘I thought you were too beautiful for me. You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.’ She whispered, ‘I thought, if we were ever naked together I’d feel ashamed.’

‘You silly girl. Silly girl.’ He held her close again.

IT FELT WRONG to be so happy in the besieged city. The fighting to the north continued; Franco’s forces were still being held. The government had fled to Valencia, and Madrid was run by committees that people said the Communists controlled. The loudspeakers in the city centre called on citizens to be wary of traitors in their midst.

Barbara worked on, dealing with exchanges of prisoners and enquiries about missing persons, but side by side with her sense of helplessness in the face of murderous chaos was an inner warmth, a lightness. ‘I love him,’ she would tell herself, and then, wonderingly, ‘And he loves me.’

He waited for her every day outside the office and they would go to her flat or the cinema or a cafe. The doctors said Bernie’s arm was healing well. In a month or so he would be fit for service again. He had asked again to help the party with new recruits to the International Brigades but they said they had enough people.

‘If only you didn’t have to go back,’ she said to him one evening. It was a few days before Christmas; they were sitting in a bar in the Centro after visiting the cinema. They had seen a Soviet film about the modernization of Central Asia, then a gangster movie with Jimmy Cagney. It was the topsy-turvy world they lived in now. Some nights the Nationalists in the Casa de Campo fired artillery down Gran Vía at the time the cinemas emptied, but not that night.

‘I’m an enlisted soldier in the Republican Army,’ Bernie said. ‘I have to go back when they tell me. Otherwise I could be shot.’

‘I wish we could just go home. Away from this. It’s what we’ve feared for years in the Red Cross. A war where there’s no difference between soldiers and civilians. A city full of people caught in the middle.’ She sighed. ‘I saw an old man in the street today, he looked like he’d been a professional of some sort, he had a thick coat on but it was old and dusty and he was looking in the bins for something to eat, peering in while pretending not to. He caught my eye and he looked so ashamed.’

‘I doubt he’s suffering any more than the poor. He’ll get the same rations. Why should it be worse for him, just because he’s middle class? This war’s got to be fought. It’s got to be.’

She took his hand across the table, looked him in the eye. ‘If you were allowed to go home now, with me, would you?’

He dropped his eyes. ‘I have to stay. It’s my duty.’

‘To the party?’

‘To mankind.’

‘I wish I had your faith sometimes. Then I mightn’t feel so bad.’

‘It’s not faith. I wish you’d try to understand Marxism, it exposes the bones of reality. Oh, Barbara, I wish you could see things clearly.’

She gave a tired laugh. ‘No, I’ve never been any good at that. Please don’t go back, Bernie. If you go now I’m not sure I could bear it. Not now. Please, please, let’s go back to England.’ She reached out and clasped his hand. ‘You’ve a British passport, you could get out. You could go into the embassy.’

He was silent for a moment. Then Barbara heard his name called out, in a voice with a strong Scottish accent. She turned and saw a fair-haired young man waving at him from the bar where he stood with a group of tired-looking men in uniform.

‘Piper!’ The Scotsman raised his glass. ‘How’s the arm?’

‘All right, McNeil. Getting better! I’ll be back soon.’

‘¡No pasarán!’ The soldier and Bernie exchanged the clenched-fist salute. Bernie turned back to Barbara, lowering his voice. ‘I can’t do it, Barbara. I love you but I can’t. And I don’t have a passport, I had to surrender it to the army. And …’ He sighed.

‘What?’

‘I’d be ashamed for the rest of my life.’ He nodded at the soldiers at the bar. ‘I can’t leave them. I know it’s hard for a woman to understand, but I can’t. I have to go back, though I don’t want to.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No. But I’m a soldier. What I want doesn’t matter.’

THE FIGHTING in the Casa de Campo ground into stalemate, trench warfare like the Western Front in the Great War. But everyone said Franco would renew his offensive in the spring, probably somewhere in the open country south of the city. There were still casualties enough; Barbara saw wounded men brought back from the front every day, lying pale-faced in carts or trucks. The mood among the populace was changing, the fiery combativeness of the autumn giving way to depression. There were shortages too; people were looking ill, getting boils and chilblains. Barbara felt guilty about the better Red Cross food she shared with Bernie. Her happiness alternated with the fear of losing him, and anger too that he could come into her life and transform it and then just march away. Sometimes the anger turned to a desperate fearful weariness.

Two days later they were walking from Barbara’s flat to her office. It was bright and cold, the sun just up, frost on the pavements. The queues for the daily ration began at seven; already a long line of black-clad women waited outside the government offices in Calle Mayor.