‘You were fond of them,’ Sofia said.

‘Yes, they were good people.’ He smiled. ‘Your family, were they Socialists too?’

She shook her head. ‘We had Socialist friends, and Anarchists, and Left Republicans. But not everyone joined a party. The parties talked of Communist and Anarchist utopias but all most people want is peace, bread on the table, self-respect. Is it not so?’

‘Yes.’

She leaned forward, an intent look in her eyes. ‘You don’t know what it was like for people like us when the Republic came, what it meant. All of a sudden we mattered. I got a place in medical school. I had to work as well in a bar, but everyone was so hopeful, change was coming at last, the chance of a decent life.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I am sorry, Señor Brett, my tongue runs away with me. I do not often get the chance to talk about those times.’

‘Don’t be sorry. It helps me understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Spain.’ He hesitated. ‘You.’

She dropped her eyes to the table, reached for her cigarettes and lit another. When she looked up there was uncertainty in her eyes.

‘Perhaps you may have to leave Spain sooner than you planned. If Franco joins the war.’

‘We’re hoping he won’t.’

‘Everyone says England will give Franco anything he wants to stay out of this war. And what happens to us then?’

Harry sighed. ‘I suppose my masters would say we have to do what we do to keep Spain out of the war, but – we haven’t much to be proud of, I know.’

Unexpectedly Sofia smiled. ‘Oh, I am sorry, you look so sad. You have done so much to help us and I argue with you, I am sorry.’

‘Don’t be. Look, can I get you another coffee?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I am afraid I have to get back. Mother and Paco are expecting me. I have to buy some food. Try to find some olive oil.’

Harry hesitated. But he had seen an advertisement in the evening paper and had decided he would ask her, unless this evening went badly. ‘Do you like the theatre?’ he asked, suddenly, clumsily, so that Sofia looked at him in puzzlement for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ he continued hastily. ‘Only Macbeth is on at the Zara theatre tomorrow night. I wondered if you’d like to go. I’d like to see it in Spanish.’

She hesitated, looking at him with those large brown eyes. ‘Thank you, señor, but I think perhaps not.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Harry said. ‘I just meant – I’d like us to be friends. I haven’t any Spanish friends.’

She smiled, but shook her head. ‘Señor, it has been good to talk to you, but we live in very different worlds.’

‘Are we so different? Am I too bourgeois?’

‘They will all be dressed up in their best for the Zara. I have no clothes like theirs.’ She sighed, looked at him again. ‘I would not have let that bother me a few years ago.’

Harry smiled. ‘Well, then.’

‘I have one dress that would do.’

‘Please come.’

She smiled back. ‘Very well, Señor Brett.’ She blushed. ‘But as friends, yes?’

IT HAD RAINED A LOT during the last week, a cold rain that sometimes turned to sleet. On the path to the quarry the prisoners squelched through clinging red mud; each day the snowline on the distant mountains descended a little lower.

That morning it was raw and damp. The work detail stood in lines by the quarry, stamping their feet to keep warm as a pair of army sappers carefully placed sticks of dynamite in a long crack running the length of a twenty-foot rockface. Sergeant Molina, back from leave, stood talking to the driver of the army truck that had brought the explosives up from Cuenca.

Bernie thought about Agustín. A few days before he had gone on leave. He left during morning roll-call; Bernie saw him walking across the yard, kitbag over his shoulder. Agustín met his eye for a second before quickly turning his head away. The gate was opened and he disappeared up the road to Cuenca.

‘That is a big charge,’ Pablo muttered. Bernie’s fellow-Communist was on the quarry detail with him now. He was an ex-miner from Asturias and knew about explosives. ‘We should stand further back, there will be splinters flying all over the place.’

‘They should have got you to set the charges, amigo.’

‘They’d be afraid I’d set them under their truck, like we did in Oviedo in ’36.’

‘If we could get our hands on it, eh, Vicente?’

‘Yes.’ The lawyer sat slumped beside them on a rock. He had been helping Molina with paperwork that morning – the sergeant, a plump lazy man promoted beyond his abilities, could barely write and the lawyer was a godsend – but he had been sent to wait with the others while the charges were set. Vicente sat with his head in his hands. His nasal condition was worse; the discharge had stopped but now the poison seemed to be trapped inside his sinuses. He couldn’t breathe through his nose and to sniff or swallow was painful.

‘Stand back! Further away!’ Molina called. The detail shuffled backwards as the sappers ran back to the truck; Molina and the driver joined them behind it.

There was a dull explosion and Bernie flinched but no chips of stone flew out. Instead the whole rock face collapsed, crumbling like a sandcastle hit by a wave. A cloud of dust fanned outwards, making them cough. A herd of the little deer that inhabited the Tierra Muerta ran down the hillside, bounding and leaping in terror.

As the dust subsided they saw the collapse had revealed a cave, four or five feet high, behind the rockface. The crevice evidently broadened out behind, running into the hillside. The sappers walked up to the cave. They produced torches and, crouching down, cautiously stepped in. There was a moment’s silence, then a sudden yell and the two men reappeared, running back down to the truck with terrified expressions on their faces. Prisoners and guards alike watched astonished.

The sappers spoke to Molina in low urgent tones. The fat sergeant laughed.

‘¿Qué diceis? ¡No es posible! ¡Estáis loco!’

‘It’s true! It’s true! Go and see!’

Molina frowned, evidently nonplussed, then led the sappers over to where Bernie and the others stood. The sergeant nodded at Vicente and he stood up groggily.

‘Ay, abogado, you are a man of learning, no? Perhaps you can make sense of this fool.’ He gestured to the nearest sapper, a thin young man with acne. ‘Tell him what you saw.’

The man swallowed. ‘In that cave, there are paintings. Men chasing animals, deer and even elephants. It is mad but we saw it!’

A flicker of interest came into Vicente’s face. ‘Where?’

‘On the wall, on the wall!’

‘Something similar was found in France a few years ago. Cave paintings by prehistoric men.’

The young soldier crossed himself. ‘It was like looking at the walls of Hell.’

Molina’s eyes lit up. ‘Could they be valuable?’

‘Only to scientists I think, sargento.’

‘May we see?’ Bernie asked. ‘I have a degree from Cambridge University,’ he added untruthfully. Molina considered a moment, then nodded. Bernie and Vicente followed him back to the cave. The sappers hung back. Molina gestured brusquely to the man who had spoken. ‘Show them.’ The man swallowed, then took his colleague’s torch and passed it to Bernie before reluctantly leading the way back to the entrance. The prisoners watched with interest.

The cave was narrow and thick with dust, making Vicente cough painfully. Ten feet in it broadened into a wide, circular cavern. Ahead, in the beams of the torches, they saw figures on the wall, stick-like men chasing huge animals, elephants with thick fur and high domed heads, rhinos, deer. Painted in bright reds and blacks, they seemed to leap and dance in the torchlight. One whole side of the cave wall was covered with them.

‘Wow,’ Bernie breathed.

‘It’s like in France,’ Vicente said quietly. ‘I saw pictures in a magazine. I had no idea the paintings could seem so – alive. You have made an important find, señor.’