Page 30 of The Last Postcard

It must have been convincing, because I heard a woman’s voice, exclaiming. I opened one watering eye a fraction and saw her, hanging over the side of the car. I hadn’t noticed her at first; she must have been the person the man was laughing with as he drove. She was just as fine-looking as he, in a peach-coloured hat, hair the colour of custard waving below its brim.

Her rouged mouth was open. I didn’t catch exactly what she said, though she sounded hurt on my behalf. Amongst the words there was one in particular that found its way through the ringing in my ears.

Arthur.

I don’t know how he did it; a mix of stolid English insistence and righteous indignation perhaps, but soon I was being pulled to my feet by the soldiers and deposited into the back seat of the car, beside the woman. The soldiers looked unhappy about it and made the man take a piece of stamped paper. A temporary pass, I found out later, issued on the condition that I left Gibraltar as soon as a doctor had seen to me.

The woman made me lie on the back seat with my head on her lap. It made me nervous, because although my disguise might have fooled men easily enough, women were another matter. So I screwed up my face and tried not to look into her grey eyes.

‘Oh it’s too awful, Arthur,’ she said, as the man got into the car. ‘He’s so young, barely more than a boy.’

‘We’ll get him seen to, Hilde,’ the man said, slamming the door. ‘Well?’ he shouted to the soldiers. ‘Are you going to let us through at last?’

Then came the clacking of the barrier, and the great, warm car was purring into life, speeding forwards, taking us into Gibraltar.

That day was one of many firsts for me. I had been in a motor before, but never one so luxurious or fine. I had been close to wealthy patrons at the inn, but never this close: had never rested my head on legs covered with silk, never smelled perfume that didn’t reek or cloy, but soothed, like the gloved hand that stroked my forehead. I had never wanted so badly to disappear, or to plunge myself into a bath and emerge gleaming new, to match those people.

But there are some things that soap cannot wash away. I could scrub and scrub and still I would be different. Beneath my skin was the past, my bad blood: the inn, the Señor and the threat of the garrotte if I was caught. They – bright creatures – knew none of that. Scorn rose in me to war with admiration, mistrust of those gloved hands and amused faces. I had grown up watching their kind; I knew how their interest could disappear in a finger-snap. I had seen them drop people back into the dirt and drive away, leaving all the damage behind them. That’s what I would be to them, I thought as we drove, a temporary diversion, nothing more. In which case, I had to be smart. I had to get what I could.

Even so, it was all I could do to keep up my pretended groans as we entered the streets of Gibraltar. A different world to La Atunara, just across the border. Here were motorcars and gleaming shop fronts, fussily dressed matrons next to sailors and soldiers and beyond them all boats – so many boats, jostling white on the sea like gulls.

The hotel they took me to was set high on the rock, above the tangle of narrow streets. The Grand, it was called. I had never set foot anywhere like The Grand.

Where the inn was straw and stone and old wood tough as iron, The Grand was marble and white gravel and shining polish. I did not belong there, in my grimy suit. Even the doormen, who were paid not to notice, looked at me as if I were a bird dropping on a scrubbed step.

But the lady was helping me out of the car; she was insisting I put my arm about her shoulder. The man was calling for a chair. One was brought, a wicker thing on wheels, and I was taken through a lobby that smelled of flowers into an elevator – another first for me – and from there along a corridor with a patterned wooden floor, into a room.

Doctor, the Englishman was saying, and I felt a stab of panic. A doctor was a thing that could not be fooled: the girls at the inn had never been successful in concealing their ailments from the health inspector. If the gentleman and the lady discovered I was a woman, what would they do? Question me? They would undoubtedly think I was no good, a whore on hard times perhaps, and tell the hotel to take me back to the border, once they were satisfied I would not die. I might have time to get away, if the Spanish authorities had not alerted the British about the murder, but if they had …

My mind racing, I began to look around the room for a way to escape. It was like the car: wide and cool and very clean, with thin curtains that billowed like sails. At any other time I would have sighed to be there, but all I could think about was my lie, and how to maintain it, and how soon these people would lose interest, and leave me to my fate.

The lady appeared with a wet cloth in her hands. I smelled her perfume again as she pushed me back into the cushions of a sofa.

‘You must stay calm, the doctor will be here soon.’ When she tried to wipe gently at my face, at the blood on my lip, I flinched away. No one had ever touched me like that before.

If anything, she looked sorry. ‘We should see about your chest,’ she murmured. ‘Let me—’ Before I knew what was happening, she had slid her hand inside the jacket, dangerously close to the strips of cloth that bound my breasts. I cried out, cringing away from her.

‘Leave him be, Hilde.’ A voice came to my rescue. ‘He’s clearly frightened. And in shock, I would guess.’ The man was standing at a sideboard. When he turned, he held two glasses, filled with brown liquid. He seemed to belong in that room the way a painting would, or a statue.

‘Here.’ He held out one of the glasses towards me.

I took it, unable to look at either of them, and sipped the liquid.

Scotch. It was Scotch. The smell of it ambushed me and I was back at the inn, breathing in spilled liquor and the stink of blood that rushed from the Señor’s throat. I choked and the glass tipped in my hand. The lady plucked it from my fingers.

‘Arthur, really. The poor boy’s probably never had a drink of whisky in his life. Go and get some brandy instead, that’s better for shock.’

Soon I found a big, bulbous glass pressed into my hands, filled with brandy. Exceptionally good brandy. I gulped it, gasped as it stung my lip and gulped the rest.

‘Bueno,’ the man said. ‘¿Cómo estás? ¿Dónde estás herido?’

I looked at him sharply. I hadn’t expected him to speak Spanish. In English, I could hide, I could play dumb, but in Spanish it would be harder.

‘Mi pierna,’ I said, nodding at my leg. ‘Sólo mi pierna.’ I didn’t want anyone prodding at my chest. ‘Y mi labio,’ I muttered, pulling down my lip to show where it was hot and swollen.

‘Gracias a Dios,’ he said, his eyes creasing in a smile. ‘I was worried you were bleeding from your guts or something.’

I shook my head, though my empty guts were smarting from the brandy, squirming at the memory of blood and Scotch. I glanced at the man again, as he spoke to the lady in English, and she made a noise of relief. When I looked back, it was into his eyes once more.