CHAPTER FIVE
Under a hot sun which brought to a head all the variegated smells of La Linea’s back streets a small, olive-skinned boy, barefoot and in rags, ran through the square to the north of the aduana, the Customs checkpoint from British territory, making towards a narrow alleyway which opened off a street beyond the Plaza Generalisimo Franco, beyond the pavement cafes and the bars and the little dark shops.
The alleyway was close, shut in.
The boy, accustomed to his surroundings, didn’t notice the dirt in that narrow way, the paint-peeled shutters and the rusty, crumbling wrought-iron work of the intricately patterned balconies above his dark head; the smell didn’t worry him — the indescribable smell of putrefying food and of slops thrown down into the paved strip below. A priest flitted by, pale and silent in his black habit, crow-like in the gloom of the deep canyon formed by the too close buildings; two women quarrelled vociferously outside a doorway into which a slim-waisted, effeminate man was trying to draw custom for the Exhibition — trying without success, for the busy time didn’t come until the troops and sailors from Gibraltar crossed the border later in the day to see the sights. A pretty girl leaned from a window, dreaming of the vineyards — the vineyards of Jerez de la Frontera, where her novio, her fiance, worked; a woman, older and not so pretty, called down a ribald remark to the hurrying boy beneath, and he lifted his coal-black, glittering eyes, turning his peaked little face upward to call back an even cruder one, accompanying it with a cheeky grin and a gesture of his fingers.
Lightly — pursued by badinage, because all the alley knew his destination by now — the boy ran on.
He ran on until he came to the end of the alley, where he knocked at the big, iron-studded door of a house which, blocking the way, made the alley into a cul-de-sac.
The door opened, and an old woman stood with a pool of darkness behind her, a faint draught blowing up the straggly white hair and sending little whirls of dust into the air. She snapped at the boy, though she knew what the answer would be:
“Que queres, hijo—who do you want, my son?”
“The señorita.”
She jerked her head backward. “Come in.”
The boy obeyed, and the old woman, who was dressed from head to foot in rusty, green-tinted black, and had a face like a nut, shut the door behind him, cutting off all sound from outside. The establishment housed many girls, but (oddly, because she was not Spanish, though no one quite knew what her nationality was) only one was referred to as The Señorita.
Inside the house was dark and cool, though dusty and peeling and uncared for. The big outer door opened into a kind of hall, a wide tiled hall off which opened many rooms; beyond, visible through a big, high, trellised grille, was a sun-filled courtyard where a fountain played, and round the yard the house, built round this hollow square, sprouted wrought-iron balconies on which the boy caught a glimpse of some of the young ladies. A burst of high laughter came from one of the balconies, and from somewhere in the house there was a faint strumming of a guitar, and a clear young voice sang of love in ancient Spain.
The crone took the boy up a flight of stairs and along to a door at the end of a passage. As they entered this passage the boy sniffed. A heavy, lingering, indescribably wonderful scent on the air… the boy didn’t know what it was called, but he had expected that smell, for he had been here before. The black eyes shone in the small pixy face. There was something in that smell that excited the senses, and it drowned the other smells of the house, overlaid its general seediness with a hint of the romance of the big world beyond the boy’s present knowing, turned the shabby, almost derelict house into a kind of fairyland in his imagination.
The old woman knocked at the door. “Señorita?”
The voice — low, sensual — came muffled: “Yes?”
“The boy. He has come again.”
“Good! If you will send him in?”
The old woman opened the door and the boy went in. The smell of the perfume was strong now as he entered that room which, though faded and stained, and barren except for the couch, a low table and chairs, an oil-lamp, and thick velvet window-curtains, was to him rich and splendid — almost paradise. He went in with heightened colour and a queer constriction in his throat, for there was little the boy didn’t know about these things, and he knew quite well what this room was used for, and it never failed to excite
his immature yet oddly knowing imagination. The señorita — that enigmatic woman who had come to La Linea and this house out of the blue not so very long before — was in the boy’s eyes beautiful. She was beautiful in anyone’s eyes, with that supple figure and the thick mass of hair which crowned the pale-gold oval of her face, the way she looked at men with that open invitation in her expression; but to the boy she was more than beautiful, for his eyes had seen mainly the sad drabs of the La Linea brothels, the old crones like Madame who had let him in, the ‘sisters’ whose ‘brothers’ sold them so regularly in the streets — and only occasionally, and remotely, the prettier girls on their balconies. Never mind the señorita’s trade: that was of no account, and anyway she was different from the rest. To the boy, of course, she should have been old; instead, she had no more than the seductive bloom of maturity, of an exciting experience; and, young as he was, the hot blood of the promiscuous and yet Victorian land of surprising contrasts, and its hot sun which sent that hot blood pounding, had filled him with a romantic love for the señorita from a distant country, the señorita whom La Linea knew as Rosia del Cuatro Caminos.
To-day all the boy could see was the mass of auburn hair on which, above a screen, the sun streaming through the window-grille cast broken bars of radiance; and two small, pale-golden hands which patted that hair into place before a glass.
The low voice came from behind the screen: “Pablo?”
“Si, señorita.” He stood there awkwardly, breathing a little fast.
“Well?”
“Señorita, the ship has entered Gibraltar. The man — the Englishman you described to me — he has come ashore and has gone to the Bristol Hotel.”
There was a soft laugh; the hands went on patting the hair. “Well done, Pablo. Anything else?”
“No.” The boy hesitated, wrinkling his nose. “Señorita— I think it is the man.” His black eyes looked unblinkingly towards the screen. “He is almost as you told me… and yet somehow he looked — different.”
Again the low laugh; there was something else in it now, though — tenderness, perhaps, and yet at the same time a hint of cruelty. “Older, Pablo? Is that it?”
“Perhaps.”
“Anno domini, hijo. It is many years since I met Commander Esmonde Shaw.” There was a tinge of regret in her voice now; regret for the years that had gone beyond recall, for the excitements of those early days… and yet there was a note of eagerness as she went on, “But we shall meet again very soon. He will come to me. I shall see to that, for I wish to see him once more as soon as it is safe for me to do so, and you shall help.” She raised her arm, sniffed the perfume which was called Je reviens. “Away with you now, Pablo,” she added abruptly. A small handful of peseta notes fluttered over the screen. “You know your orders meanwhile, and I shall have fresh ones for you later.”