1 My Heart Forgets To Beat
“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”
- Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”
2 Part One: April,1937
Valentian girl with boots and balls
His kisses will say, “I want you, Laura” and today more than their tongues will speak. Afterwards hand-in-hand they will enter the RED
STAR café and the comrades may feast their eyes. Meanwhile, Vaughan holds two cans of caviar under her nose, courtesy of Uncle Joe, Just an itsy-bitsy picnic! Look, a bunch of the sweet onions; and here, fresh bread from the company stores. Already packed is a flask of red wine drawn from the oak of La Mancha, and a tin of Ukrainian cigarettes. She gives a cry, Ah, the ones you bend in case the tobacco falls out. If that is not enough, into the knapsack he carries everywhere like a donkey go water & biscuits, billycan, notebook, fountain pen and the heavy old revolver he bought off a smuggler in Barcelona. He glances up and smiles, It's not too far into the countryside. Not too far? On foot, you should note, across fields crawling with enemies. He averts his eyes, Our own little reconnaissance sortie, my little brown dove. What a schemer! They will leave town, find trees for shade and grass for their behinds. He will
3 ply her with food, drink and when her patience is at an end, prove his manhood. Everyone knows what caviar is good for. Laura, he chides in abysmal Spanish learnt from the poems of Lorca, Drunken gendarmes are beating on the doors. But it is not the fascists we should fear, may they go to the devil. It is the spring, which has warmed the air and opened the first magnolias. He wags his finger, Beware of the soil, which is cold and damp as a riverbank at dawn. That said, he produces a Moroccan rug, borrowed for you-know-what. He winks, rolls it up and ties it under the sack with the knots you pull. What kind of man cares for such detail? Can he be the possessor of testicles? She yawns and stretches. His answer is to smile as though all is normal. But today will see them in action. She leans back against a wall and rolls her eyes, Aiee, the birds have flown. Mercifully, he shoulders rifle and binoculars and off they set, like poachers of geese.
*
His Laura had ridden the fast passenger service that still ran some days between Alicante and Madrid. The irony was how the rest of the British volunteers were at the station, waiting to board the next train back to the coast. They would spend their first leave since Jarama loafing on the seaside, jammy blighters. Not Comrade Vaughan! The Welshman from Liverpool had drawn the short straw. And was he put out? Burn his union card? Did he heck-as-like. As soon as the order was posted, he'd nipped smartly over to the post office, bribed the censor and got off a telegram to his girl,
4 LEAVE CANCELLED STOP YOU COME HERE STOP VT
In six months, they'd met up twice, exchanged post cards and the odd crackling telephone call. They were owed, all right. After dark, Laura wired back,
HAVE TWO DAY PASS ARRIVE TOMORROW TRAIN LL
The whistle blew and in she rolled. He weighed up the odds. On the pro side, the moon-faced girl came when called, jumped from the carriage and possessively took his arm. On the contra, she was barely half his age. Nineteen-years of smouldering cheek and a tongue to kill. He hung his head as he spoke, crawling under the trip wires and snipers of no-man's-land. Whenever he glanced up, the whites of her eyes flashed. How the brows of her angled. Why? Because he'd suggested following the tracks to the far side of town? An hour's walk at most. The quickest way into the countryside. She didn't seem impressed by the packing, either. Weren't his treats good enough? No English chocolate. The ends of her lips forked down. She crossed her arms and leaned back, shoulder blades against the wall. Ravishing! In dun-coloured overalls and floppy black beret, she managed the look of a Paris mannequin. The pose of her, pouting at the expedition on foot. His kingdom for a motorcycle! Then again, she could have raised the roof in Spanish, or worse still, screeched at him in Valencian. Give her a smile. Keep your powder dry,
5 boyo. After all, following the railway wasn't such a bad idea; not many folk about. Slowly, slowly catch your monkey. And anyway, all was well. Before she had time to sulk again, there they were, strutting along the branch line like a pair of alley kids, holding hands and kicking up the dust. Not the route march to damnation, just a glorious walk on a fine Spring day. So, out with it, man. Say your piece, Where is this famous rain, then? That turned her head, This famous “what”? The rain in Spain? Her expression flinched, as if the words touched something peculiar, “The rain in Spain?” What means that? They say it falls in the plain. Still she gave that puzzled look. He repeated the rhyme in English, then in Spanish. She shook her head, It's just nonsense. Are you insane? Completely. He gave her hand a squeeze, I'm in love, see, with a smashing girl. Aiee! The girl would have looked smashing in an old sack, which those old overalls almost were. She had them rolled at the cuffs, the fine down of her arms rippling in the breeze. Her feet were small enough to be shod in boots more like a public schoolboy's than the general issue. A belt of black webbing drawn tightly at the waist exaggerated her hour-glass shape. Below the unbuttoned neck was a glimpse of white. She probably wore just a loose cotton slip underneath, the soap-scented boobies of her swinging from side to side. Very wanton, see. His heart
6 forgot to beat. She answered his daftness by snapping up two long stalks of grass and offering him one. He could have prattled on, but thoughts of her underwear left him chewing the cud. Dandelions and giant thistles along the path were staging their spring offensive while the hot noon air buzzed with the looting of insects. Underfoot, weeds were sprouting from the gravel, the rails of the track rusting. They were headed West, towards the front, effectively marching into danger land on a branch line no passenger trains had run in months. Ahead of them, bare telegraph poles strutted across green and yellow fields. Far in the distance, the mountains of Toledo rose purple and grey out of a thick haze. What could not be seen were the hordes of fascists and religious fanatics dug in there. Like the sudden uprising of weeds, spring was coaxing them out of the ground. Fortunately, to North, South and East - that is, from the shores of the Med to the streets of Madrid - the Republic of Spain remained solid. In government reports at least, the front line was still somewhere up there in those mountains. In reality, ambushes had been reported fifty kilometres deep into the plain of Castile La Mancha. Yessir, the insurgents were getting bolder, creeping further from their caves and foxholes as the days grew long and hot.
Dragging her feet somewhat, the girl from the coast still looked irked by her trip into the countryside. It wouldn't do to guess what she was thinking. Chastened somewhat, Vaughan let go of her hand and stalked ahead. There was a water tower and a fork where a passing track began. He stopped at the levers and waved her to join him. It was odd. A watchman's hut stood behind the levers, the obvious place for a guard
7 post, yet it was deserted. Why leave it without a picket? He would report as much to Brigade. Furthermore... He a gave a puzzled cry. What was that ahead? He took the suffering girl's hand again and pulled her on. In the distance stood a lone rail car, shunted onto the passing track and basking in the full glare of the sun. First class, by its livery. Laura sighed, Is there a problem? Well, is this any way to do things? The anarchist in her spat, Huh! The rich travel in style and the poor walk in bare feet under the pitiless sun. Let us find a nice tree to shade us and rest a while. Yes, the bloody sun was always there. Never mind the privileges of rich folk, the sun was absolute monarch even in the republic. Throughout the winter months, dry as they were, the sun had reigned unchallenged. Now it was only April, look you, and his brain had cooked in its hat. Talk about mad dogs and Englishmen. How could anyone think in such heat? Whenever he fixed his eyes on an object he was always distracted; any object, that shimmering rail car for example. Immediately he spotted it, some old newsreel images flashed into his head. What were they now? A forest clearing, limousines, Field Marshals bowing stiffly, shaking hands and climbing aboard. Of course, the carriage where the Armistice was signed in 1918! He lifted his beret and smeared the sweat across his brow. Idle thoughts. This was Spain, 1937, not France in 1918. Anyone who thought either side, Nationalist or Republican, were ready to throw in the towel was a damn fool. Christmas had long come and gone in this bitch of a war. That old carriage would become a roost for chickens years
8 before the fighting was done. In fact, a stalemate had been reached. Russia was on one side, the German-Italian Axis on the other, Britain and France playing neutral. A civil war like this could stretch on for decades. And a simple foot soldier could do nothing but keep slogging, day-in, day-out. So why not put the thing to some use? At least they could step aboard, sit down on plush seats and cool their pounding heads. Closer up, the carriage transformed from blazing mirage into stark nightmare. At a hundred paces, they saw all the windows were smashed in. At fifty, rows of shell holes showed up in the woodwork. At twenty the sound volume came up like a bad change of reel in a picture house, suddenly a swarm of angry of flies hovered above the roof. Level with the foot-plates, the smell of rotting flesh hit them. Toxic fumes tore the insides of their nostrils. Speechless, they covered their faces and strutted past. A hundred metres on, Vaughan was still shaking. To calm himself, he strained to think how such a shambles had come about, how long ago it was attacked, if it was it stationery, strafed by planes, ambushed on the ground? Why hadn't the bodies - there must be many dead - been removed? Presumably the victims were fascists, but not having the stomach to look inside, he didn't know if they were soldiers or civilians. The questions soon had his head spinning. And still they came. He tried to see it from a tactical point of view. What had become of the battle reports? Perhaps they were sitting on some commissar's desk waiting for action. He might pick them up every day and put them straight down again in disgust. Was no one available to clear up the mess? Or was there no one willing?
9 Laura said nothing, walking with hands in pockets and thinking her own thoughts. The things you saw in a war. Like the three monkeys, sometimes you simply had to shut your eyes stop your ears and keep your stupid mouth shut. But that awful smell. It seemed to follow them along, threatening to cast a dark shadow over the day. Had it got into their clothes? Onto their skin? The only thing to be done, Vaughan decided at length, was to go back and burn the thing. Light a fire under it and let it burn, bodies and all. Otherwise they'd have cholera breaking out or an epidemic of typhoid on their hands. Fire, yes, fire was the only answer. Pile wood and straw underneath then... drat! The flames would only destroy the sleepers and buckle the rails. At last, needing to voice his thoughts, he tried to catch Laura's eye. The expression on her face stopped his tongue. She had moved on and he realised she was staring at something further down the track. His eyes followed hers, and at first he couldn't see the wood for the tree. In the strangest of reversals, they had stumbled upon the most powerful symbol of life you could wish for: a giant hawthorn in full bloom. It was a truly magnificent specimen, even for Spain. A thousand creamy blossoms sprouted from the branches and held up a shimmering world of honey bees and butterflies. Without a word, they stooped under its shade, sat with their backs to the trunk and drank in the delicious air. The contrast in smell was like a religious conversion. Even the loud buzz of insects was calm and without menace. When they turned to face each other, a smile creased Laura's mouth and he noticed that her teeth were even brighter than the whites of her eyes.
10 Eventually, reluctantly, they left the shade of the hawthorn tree. Fragrant and beautiful as it was, it was no place for a picnic. The trackside thereabouts was bordered by rows of ugly buildings; poor people's hovels to one side, artisan's workshops to the other. All were deserted, forlorn and decrepit. His search for beauty and quietude, for an idyllic grove or enchanted bower would have to proceed. Laura had been right to peeve about their walk. The way seemed full of troubles and was getting worse instead of better. Just a little further on, they entered a badlands of shunting yards and sidings. The path veered way from the track and lost direction, zigzagging between piles of chipping stones and stacks of old sleepers. With no shade, the sun beat mercilessly on the floppy berets that swaddled their heads. It became painful just to raise an eye above the horizon. At the very edge of town, the route narrowed again and passed under the garden wall of a great house. Branches hung over the track, leaves fresh and bright, flowers in lovely pastel shades. He counted mulberry, cherry, fig and the rosy blossoms of a strange species in bloom before it leafed. Was that what they called a Judas? Best of all was a huge horse chestnut, of a type unknown to him, holding up great triangles of petals like pink Christmas trees. In the corner, the wall had been broken through, offering a glimpse of rich folks' pleasure garden. Good place for the picnic? Laura shook her head. The great house stood empty and spooky, just like the hovels of the poor. Most of the population had fled to Toledo when the soldiers came to town. The first living souls they saw since setting off were a group of pickets guarding the points and levers at the end of the passing line. Anarchist
11 militia, by the red and black of their armbands, they sheltered under the awning of another watchman's cabin. This one, at least, was manned. Concertina music sashayed from a military wireless set. The youths lounged with their cigarettes, shamelessly gazing Laura's way before suddenly standing up. The music stopped. All saluted with clenched fists, Solidarity! Solidarity! Vaughan would have lingered to smoke, chat and enjoy the music, but Laura squeezed his hand and drew him away. A few paces on, she began her talk, Aiee! Such fellows. You know those comrades? I know farm boys.
He had heard her story the first night they danced. A syndicalist from a town on the coast, she served in a militia unit that was raised from the Collective of Footwear Factories. There were many ready-made boot and shoe businesses in the cantons of Catalonia. Two weeks after the Nationalists started the insurrection, she had quit her job and volunteered. Why? She paused. The reason was a personal grudge. Her brother was doing his Military Service. The officers at his barracks, all of them the sons of whores, ordered the men in their charge over to the rebels. A few of the conscripts slipped away or went sick. Most followed like dumb sheep. Only Miguel and some other fellows from the East stuck to their republican oaths. The boys were arrested and court- martialed for refusing to obey military orders in an emergency. As soon
12 as sentence was passed, they were frog-marched out of the barracks and shot by firing squad. Their former comrades! Word of this atrocity had travelled fast, the fascists not shy of broadcasting their intention to liquidate all soldiers loyal to the Republic. Neither professionals nor conscripts, officers nor privates, would be spared. The bitterness of Laura's story was sharpened by the matter-of-fact way she told it. On their second meeting, she had repeated the facts, verbatim, to a group of comrades in the Brigade. The words had a chilling impact; if anything the story of her