In a restaurant Mike and I went to for lunch a buxom pale-faced waitress, with thin lips and a mass of black ringlets going down her back, demanded very belligerently in Spanish to know — a delicious tear on her cheek — why I had delayed so long before coming back? She as good as threw my plate of pasta on the table, and the more I denied having seen her before the angrier she became. Finally Mike talked to her at the bar, and found that she took me for her Swedish boyfriend, and even by the end of the meal she thought I still might be him.
In February I wrote ‘Once in a Weekend’, the story of a young Nottingham factory worker enjoying himself in a pub on Saturday night, and waking up on Sunday morning in bed with his absent workmate’s wife. The beginning went: ‘With eleven pints of beer and seven small gins inside him Arthur fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom.’ To save paper I used the reverse pages of the bound copy of The Deserters, which novel had been out three times already and rejected, and was now put aside as unpublishable. The story of Arthur’s weekend was sent to magazines in the next few months, but always came back without comment, so it was later used as the first chapter of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
I felt some affection for Malaga on my last day, but was glad all the same to be leaving, having a date with Ruth in Barcelona. I arrived there early, after changing trains in Madrid, on 17th February. Unshaven and tired, having deposited my cases at the left luggage, I walked along the Paseo de Colon, turned right up the tree lined Rambla, feeling almost home again, since I had been there before, and in a narrow street of the Old Town enquired at the reception desk of a cheap hotel if they had a room.
The clerk looked wary, as if a leper stood before him. Two men in trilby hats and raincoats came up from behind and told me to come with them. On asking what they wanted one of them flashed an embossed Technicolor badge and said I was under arrest.
They walked me through the streets, then by a sentry into a grey-stoned fortress-like police station, and led me into a room to be questioned. My passport and French identity card were looked at and taken away, and an elderly man, who invited me to sit down, asked what I was doing in Spain. I told him I was a writer, and in any case was there for my health, which was candid enough, for it was plain I had done nothing they could hold me for, though at the same time I speculated on what soft of an article could be made out of the experience, or whether it would be of any use in a novel.
The only possible reason for my detention was that in the crowded night train from Madrid I had said, or perhaps only agreed with, uncomplimentary remarks about General Franco. Some coppers’ nark must have reported me as soon as the train arrived at the station, and I had been followed to the hotel. No other explanation made sense, and I cursed myself for not keeping my mouth shut, having now to face the worry of being deported to the French frontier a hundred miles away.
Arrangements to meet Ruth had been going on for some weeks, both of us scraping up money to live on once we were together, though I already knew that my pension would be paid at its full rate for another year or so. She was on her way, and would expect me to meet her at the station the following day. What would happen if I wasn’t there? She was coming on a single ticket, and I wasn’t sure whether the money she had would cover a night in a hotel and the return fare to England.
Time went by in seemingly inconsequential talk which I suppose — looking back on it — some would call an interrogation. I was tired after several sleepless nights, and also hungry, but lost neither patience nor sense of humour, playing the ordinary tourist who was fascinated by all to do with the inexhaustibly interesting country of Spain. To a certain extent this was true, but my typewriter, which they opened and looked at closely, as well as my fluency in the language, would have made me suspect in any totalitarian country. Nor could my Colony of Gibraltar passport have endeared me to them, and acquiring it merely for the sake of Noreen’s car now seemed an act of rashness. Even so, I implicitly believed that ‘The Governor of the Colony of Gibraltar requires, in the name of Her Majesty, all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance etc’ would keep me safe.
Lights came on when it grew dark outside, and there had been silence between me and my questioner for some time. I imagined that a wireless operator in a far-off room near the top of the building (aerials had been noted on glancing up at the entrance) had been told to tap out a telegram to Madrid for confirmation that my visa wasn’t forged. Eventually, the reply must have arrived, for one of the men who had detained me came in with my passport and said I was free to go.
There was a slight shade of disappointment in his otherwise neutral politeness, and when I asked for my French carte de séjour he denied all knowledge of it. I persisted for a while, as did he with his lie, but then it seemed best to forget the matter. It was unlikely that I would live in France during the next few years, and the loss of a bit of cardboard was a small price to pay for my liberty, though I had liked the idea of having a French identity card.
Next day at the station Ruth came with the news that my story ‘The Match’ had been taken by Carrefour. Ilse Steinhoff had met her at the Gare du Nord and given her twelve pounds to bring me, which more than paid for the two days we spent in Barcelona.
Chapter Thirty
At twenty-six, after five years of unremitting dedication, there was little to show for my writing. Quantity was not lacking, but quality was slow in coming. Stories and parts of novels suggested that recognition should have been closer than it was, but the perfection of whatever talent existed would only evolve at its own rate.
Nothing could speed the process, and no one could help with the problems that needed solving. Even if anyone could, the role of respectful acolyte or adoring tyro was not part of my temperament. Reading great writers imparted much, but the more enjoyable their works the harder they were to learn from, because the sheer hedonism of reading blinded me to the peculiar analysis which would point to faults in my own work. If success took long in coming at least their company acted as encouragement, and gave consolation. Trusting no one but myself, I went on writing, lack of qualification for any other work contributing to such persistence, as well as the absolute faith that I could have no vocation but that of writer. Success would come if I went on long enough.
In my otherwise optimistic and easy-going way — I had an income, however small — I was beginning to realize that telling a story was not good enough unless written with such conviction that the language and content indicated I had something to say as well as a tale to unfold. The best writing was when the movement of my pen coincided neatly with the tone of my thoughts, leading to the knowledge that every writer has his or her own unique voice, or style, and that though some might find such a voice more quickly than others, the longer it took to do so the more likely was it to be your own and not somebody else’s. As a trial and error system it could only be called learning the hard way, and for most of the time the business of living, and being involved in the actual writing, was a sufficiently powerful anodyne to keep such nagging thoughts in their place. The only allies against the problems which beset me were energy and faith.