But the crowd round the pile of photographs was so thick they had to turn the other way, towards Maestre. The general stepped forward into Harry’s path and greeted him unsmilingly.

‘Señor Brett, good morning. Milagros was wondering if you had vanished from the earth.’

‘I’m sorry, general, I’ve been very busy, I—’

He glanced at Sofia. She gave him a cold, angry look. ‘Milagros was hoping you would ring her,’ the general went on. ‘Though she has given up now.’ He glanced back at his family. ‘My wife likes to come here, try to find some of our looted family treasures. I tell her she will catch something, mixing with these whores from the slums.’ He raised his eyebrows at Sofia, running his eyes up and down her old black coat, then turned and walked back to his wife and Milagros, who was pretending to be absorbed with a Dresden shepherdess. Sofia stared after him, her hands clenched, breathing hard. Harry touched her shoulder.

‘Sofia, I’m so sorry—’

She thrust his hand away and turned into the crowd. The press of people stopped her from walking faster than a shuffle and Harry quickly caught her up.

‘Sofia, Sofia, I’m sorry.’ Gently he turned her round to face him. ‘He’s a pig, a brute, insulting you like that.’

To his surprise she laughed, harshly and bitterly. ‘Do you think people like me aren’t used to insults from people like him? Do you think I care what that old shit says?’

‘Then what?’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, you don’t understand, we talk of these things but you don’t understand.’

He fumbled for her hands, clutched at them. People were staring but he didn’t care. ‘I want to understand.’

She took a deep breath. She pulled away from his grip. ‘We’d better walk on, we’re offending public morals.’

‘All right.’ He fell into step beside her. She looked up at him.

‘I have heard of that man. General Maestre. His was one of the names we feared during the Siege. They say in one village he ordered all the Socialist councillors’ wives brought into the town square and got the Moors to tie them up and cut off their breasts in front of their men. I know there was a lot of propaganda but I nursed a man from that village, he said it was true. And when they occupied Madrid last year, Maestre had a big part in rounding up subversives. Not just Communists; people who only ever wanted a secure peaceful life, a share of their country.’ Harry saw she was crying, tears running down her face. ‘The cleansing, they called it. Night after night you could hear the shots from the east cemetery. You still can sometimes. They took this city like an occupying army and that’s how they still hold it. And the Falange strutting and rampaging over our city—’

They had reached a quieter area. Sofia came to a sudden halt. She took a deep breath and wiped her face with a handkerchief. Harry stood looking at her. There was nothing he could say. She touched his arm. ‘I know you try to understand,’ she said. ‘But then I see you talking to that creature. You have come to visit this – this hell – from another world, Harry. You will stay a while and then go back.’ She bent her head. ‘Take me back to your flat, Harry, let’s make love. At least we can make love. I don’t want to talk more now.’

They walked on without talking, back to Plaza de Cascorro where the market began. As they threaded their way through the square Harry thought, what if I could get her out, get her to England. But how? She’d never leave her mother and Enrique and Paco and how could I get them out too? She walked ahead of him, shoving her way through the crowds, strong and indomitable but so small, so vulnerable in this city ruled by the generals that Hoare and Hillgarth plied with the Knights of St George.

IN THE TIERRA MUERTA the weather had turned bad. One morning the camp woke to find everything covered in snow, even the steep roofs of the watchtowers. The snow was thick on the mountain path to the quarry, soaking through the prisoners’ cracked old boots. Bernie remembered his mother, when he was a child, saying he must be sure never to get his feet wet in the winter, it was a sure way to catch a cold. He laughed aloud and Pablo turned and gave him an odd look.

The men stopped for their brief rest at the fold in the hills from which, if conditions were right, Cuenca appeared in the distance. You couldn’t see anything today, only a glimpse of the brown cliff of the gorge between the white hills and the cold milky sky.

‘Come on, you lazy bastards!’ the guard called. The men stamped their feet to restore the circulation and got back into line.

Vicente was dying. The authorities had seen enough deaths to know when someone was on the way out and had stopped trying to make him work. For the last two days he had lain on his pallet in the hut, drifting in and out of consciousness. Whenever he woke he begged for water, saying his head and throat were on fire.

That night a strong wind came in from the west, bringing a heavy sleety rain that melted the snow. It was still raining heavily next morning, the wind driving it across the yard in vertical sheets. The men were told there would be no work parties that day: the guards don’t fancy a day out in this, Bernie thought. The storm continued; the men stayed in their huts and played cards or sewed or read the Catholic tracts and copies of Arriba that were all they were allowed.

Bernie knew the Communist group had held a meeting to discuss him a couple of days before. Since then they had avoided him, even Pablo, but they didn’t say what they had decided. Bernie guessed they were waiting till Vicente died, giving him a short period of grace.

The lawyer slept most of the morning but woke towards noon. He made a croaking sound. Bernie had been lying on his pallet but got up and leaned over him. Vicente was very thin now, his eyes sunk deep inside black circles. ‘Water,’ he croaked.

‘I’ll get some, wait a minute.’ Bernie put on his old patched army greatcoat and went out into the rain, wincing as pellets of sleet blew into his face. There was no water supply to the huts and he had carefully cleaned out his piss-bucket, leaving it out overnight to catch the rain. It was almost full. He carried it in, scooped some water into a tin cup, then gently lifted the lawyer’s head so he could drink. Establo, lying on the opposite bed, laughed throatily. ‘Ay, inglés, do you make the poor man drink your piss?’

Vicente leaned back; even the effort of drinking exhausted him. ‘Thanks.’

‘How are you?’

‘A lot of pain. I wish it was over. I think, no more quarry, no more Sunday services. I’m so tired. Ready for the endless silence.’ Bernie didn’t reply. Vicente smiled tiredly. ‘Just now I was dreaming about when we first came here. Do you remember, that lorry? How it jolted?’

‘Yes.’

After Bernie’s capture he had spent many months at the San Pedro de Cardena prison, where the first psychiatric tests had been done. By then most of the English prisoners had been repatriated through diplomatic channels, but not him. Then in late 1937 he had been transferred, along with a mixture of Spanish and foreign prisoners considered politically dangerous, to the Tierra Muerta camp. Bernie wondered whether his party membership was the reason the embassy hadn’t petitioned for his release; surely his mother would have tried to get him out when she learned he was a prisoner.

They were driven to the Tierra Muerta in old army lorries and Vicente was shackled next to him on the bench. He asked Bernie where he was from and soon they were engaged in an argument about communism. Bernie liked Vicente’s wry sense of humour, and he had always had that soft spot for bourgeois intellectuals.

A few days after their arrival at the Tierra Muerta, Vicente sought him out. The lawyer had been delegated to help the administration with the mountain of forms involved in inducting prisoners into the new camp. Bernie was sitting on a bench in the yard. Vicente sat beside him and lowered his voice.