The Last Goodnight Page 14

  Leche refused to play along. At sundown the bombs begin falling on Valencia, he explained tersely. “The chancery staff takes refuge outside the city in Las Palmeras. There’s a nice bit of beach. You can go for a swim and I’ll make sure there’s a room for you. You can catch up on your lost sleep there.”

  “It sounds ideal,” said Betty.

  Sir John Leche, whom Betty first met when he was the British chargé d’affaires in Valencia during the Spanish Civil War.

  Churchill Archives Center, Papers of Harford Montgomery Hyde, HYDE 02 011 / Alpha Press Photo Ltd.

  IN HER NEWLY PURCHASED SWIMSUIT, Betty swam in the warm Mediterranean waters and then lay on a superb sandy beach. Restored, she put on a low-cut cocktail dress. She made sure her hair was perfect. Satisfied, she joined the others for dinner.

  Leche, in open-necked shirt, tan trousers, and espadrilles, looking more like a man on holiday than His Majesty’s chief diplomat in a war-torn country, set the evening’s breezy tone. With great ceremony he placed Betty on his right, unseating the stunning secretary who usually had that honor, and who spent the rest of the meal alternately shooting daggers at Betty and looking with aggrieved longing at her boss. Leche paid no attention; sardonic one moment, scowling the next, and constantly keeping up a droll, flirtatious banter, he focused on Betty.

  With the wine flowing and the starlight dancing on the placid sea, Betty was at ease and in control. She could play along and at the same time never lose operational focus. She waited, and when the time was right, she abruptly shut down her charm.

  “You have been very kind in having me looked after in Valencia and inviting me here, Mr. Leche,” said Betty. “But that is as far as my gratitude goes. Not so very far, is it?” she challenged.

  “Would you be good enough to tell me what the devil it is you want?”

  A radiant smile was her customary preamble. Then: “I want some form of authorization from the Spanish authorities permitting me to go to Madrid by whatever means I can get there. Otherwise”—she now shot a warning glance at the secretary whose place at the table, and apparently in the minister’s heart, she’d taken—“I am likely to be your guest here for the rest of the war.”

  Then with great dignity she rose and followed the moonlit path to her room.

  The next morning Betty left before breakfast. An early-rising member of the clerical staff was happy to give her a ride back into the city.

  She spent a long, tiring day making her way through the offices of countless Republican officials. She brazenly asked each for his help in locating Carlos. Some were polite, others rudely dismissive. But none of them would offer even a tiny clue. Dejected, she took a lonely, aimless walk around the city.

  Late that afternoon she returned to the chancery. She had no plan, but she also had nowhere else to go. As soon as she entered the building, Betty was told the minister wanted to see her.

  Leche was stern. He was imperious. He made it clear that Mrs. Pack’s behavior was totally unacceptable. He had had enough.

  “I want you to know that I am not deliberately being a nuisance,” said Betty with, at last, a measure of apology. “I had been obliged to make a secret get-away from Hendaye. Now I am going to do the same thing from Valencia,” she said, trying to be brave even in defeat.

  “Oh no you’re not.”

  His words rankled. A moment earlier Betty could easily have broken down in tears. But not now. She had had a difficult day, but that was all. She would not give up. She would not return to France. If the minister thought he could force her, he was in for a battle.

  “My secretary went out early and got this for you.”

  He handed Betty a thin piece of paper, the seal of the Ministry of Defense of the Spanish Republic emblazoned at the top. She read the short paragraph that followed with astonishment: all soldiers and officials of the Republic were to grant Mrs. Pack and her chauffeur “free transit and every assistance and protection.”

  “Be downstairs at eight o’clock this evening,” Leche continued even as she read and, still not quite believing, reread the document. “A car will be waiting. You’re on your own now. Good-bye.”

  Once again Betty had half a mind to weep. But she managed to hold off until she left Leche’s office. When she finally did, she cried tears of gratitude.

  Chapter 20

  BOMBS POURED DOWN FROM THE night sky as they rode through the night.

  Along with the Spanish driver, Leche had provided a Captain Lance—his name was an alias, his rank an invention, and his ostensible role at the chancery further cover; he was the resident spook—to accompany her for the two-hundred-mile journey. But when the droning buzz of a swarm of Nationalist bombers filled the darkness, there was little an MI6 agent, however skilled and resourceful, could do. All he could offer Betty was a hard shoulder to lean on as they huddled together in the back seat. A nearby blast rocked the vehicle, and in silent unison they prayed the next explosion would not be the last sound they ever heard.

  From time to time they managed to stop the car before the planes got too close, then scramble to a roadside ditch or take shelter behind a rock outcropping. When the convoy of bombers passed and the earth stopped trembling, they would get back in the vehicle and continue their uneasy, perilous journey. Headlights off so as not to signal their presence on the road, they drove on slowly. But then there would be the awful sound of the next wave of planes coming their way, and again they would dart from the car in helpless panic.

  The irony of this journey, Betty knew, was that these were Nationalist planes, bombs dropped from the night sky by pilots whose cause she supported. And why were her sympathies with the Fascists? Her allegiances, she explained to Hyde, were, as always, personal. The Nationalists were the party of the church, of her lover, of her wealthy and aristocratic friends. To have chosen the Republican side, even though they were the legitimately elected government, would have been, she said, a betrayal of all the people she loved. But that night, with the bombs raining down, she had no politics. She just wanted to survive.

  She arrived in the first light of dawn in Madrid. Captain Lance offered a small salute, and, his mission accomplished, left Betty alone in front of the abandoned British embassy.

  Almost at once the bombing started. Betty pounded on the embassy door, and after what seemed like a lifetime, the surprised caretaker appeared and let her in. The grand rooms, just months ago bustling with important activity, were dark and eerily silent. Betty could hear the explosions outside, and she crouched against a thick plaster wall. Above her head hung the official portraits of King George V and Queen Mary, and that was a comfort; she half convinced herself that with the personal protection of their Imperial Majesties, she would be safe.

  Later that morning, as a calm interlude settled over the city, Betty made her way to her old apartment. Walking past the long queues of desperate people lining up at the bakeries and shops for the daily ration of bread and food, seeing the throngs of ragged children running in wild packs through the streets, she told herself that it would be foolish to expect things to be as she had left them. Still, she was unprepared for what she found.

  The courtyard of the apartment house at Castellana 63 had once been an elegant entryway, a small, carefully manicured park with tall shade trees and bright flower beds. Now it had been transformed into a refugee camp. Pigs, hens, and even a few cows roamed indolently about. Families had plunked down their mattresses on what had once been a garden. Shouting children raced over the cobblestones. The sharp, slightly sickening smells of strange foods being cooked over open fires filled the air.

  Upstairs, the embassy seal that Arthur had fixed with so much confidence on the front doorpost the day they left for Biarritz had been slashed. She pushed the door, and it swung open; the lock had been removed. Cautiously, she crossed the threshold.

  The clean white world Betty had so optimistically created two long years ago was a shambles. She acknowledged the obvious symbolism with a sad smile, an
d then grimly began a more comprehensive inspection. The Wells family silver, a wedding present from her mother, had been stolen. The rest of their belongings, however, were mostly still there; the thieves apparently had no use for ball gowns, morning suits, china, or books. As for the missing silver, Betty shrugged off the loss; she did not need any more reminders of her mother.

  Waving a handful of pesos, she recruited one of the men camped out in the courtyard below to help repair the front door and get the apartment back into some kind of order. His name was Enrique, and he explained that he’d traveled up to Madrid after his family home was destroyed in the fighting down south. Betty, who had a sentimental streak, treated Enrique with kindness, and within a few hours he’d become devoted to her. “He seemed to gain satisfaction from protecting me,” she recalled to Hyde, still somewhat mystified by this sort of simple and unwavering loyalty.

  The apartment, Betty glumly told herself as she looked around, would be the base from which she would launch her search for Carlos. It was lonely, not very secure, and right on the front lines of a raging war, but it would have to do.

  A pounding on the front door interrupted these uneasy thoughts. It was the embassy caretaker, with an envelope.

  A Miss Fernanda Jacobsen of the Scottish Ambulance Unit in Spain, a group of volunteers working under the thin protection of the International Red Cross, wrote to welcome Betty to Madrid and offer shelter. If Mrs. Pack was willing to put up with their rough accommodations, the “boys” of the ambulance unit would be glad to take her in.

  How did she know I’d arrived in Madrid? a puzzled Betty wondered. But in the next moment she solved the mystery—Leche! Once again she offered the minister, so cutting one moment, so gracious the next, her mystified thanks. And then, eager to escape her ransacked apartment, she went off to meet Miss Jacobsen and “the boys.”

  Fernanda Jacobsen, center, and two unidentified members of the Scottish Ambulance Unit in Spain.

  Churchill Archives Center, Papers of Harford Montgomery Hyde, HYDE 02 007

  A ROUTINE OF SORTS QUICKLY settled in. Betty spent her days trying to locate Carlos. It was a furtive, tedious search; she had decided that direct questions might place her lover in even greater danger. So she waved a false flag. She went to Republican ministries and to hospitals around the city and made inquiries about captured air force officers. She had concocted a story that the British government was trying to locate them, and shamelessly implied that the plan was to bring them before an international tribunal. It was a ridiculously fraudulent approach; it seemed absurd to her even as she spoke the words. But she never faltered as she offered it up to the authorities. And in the process the novice secret agent learned another valuable lesson: a coat of sincerity can whitewash even the biggest lies.

  At nightfall Betty entered another world. Each evening the bombs would begin to fall. And there was Betty right in the thick of it, careening around Madrid with the ambulance crews. Shells pounded buildings, explosions turned entire blocks into flaming infernos, and the rickety ambulances, their sirens screaming amid the roar of destruction, rushed toward each new disaster.

  Every night was its own adventure. A child pulled out of the flames of a burning building. The frantic hunt through the debris of what had once been a family’s home for a grieving man’s missing wife. The surgical wards already crowded with moaning victims as Betty, her heart overwhelmed but still outwardly resolute, helped carry in one more blood-soaked body. Then the all-clear siren and the sweet relief of a calming swig of Scotch with the boys, and a precious cigarette made from loo paper and a few scavenged shreds of tobacco. Betty had never been more scared, yet every tense minute energized her. In the process she picked up, she told Hyde, “good training in keeping cool . . . which helped me during my later life.”

  She lived this improbable, almost solitary way, only the ambulance boys for company, for nearly a month. It was as if she had never known any other way to live. She also had begun to suspect that these would be her last days. Charging around a blazing Madrid in an ambulance, she had learned very quickly to be philosophical about the prospect of her own death. Resigned, she decided that perhaps it would be better if in her twenty-sixth year it all came to a sudden end. She had given up any hope of finding Carlos, and without him, life, she told herself, full of her customary high drama, didn’t seem worth living.

  Then late one afternoon, just as she was preparing to go off for another hazardous night’s run with the ambulance crew, Enrique appeared at the group’s headquarters. “I have news, señora,” the old man whispered conspiratorially into her ear. “About our friend.”

  Betty listened, and then let out a shout of pure joy. All at once she had found a renewed reason to live.

  Carlos was in a prison somewhere near Valencia! He was alive!

  WITH THE WELCOME SOUND OF the all-clear sirens echoing through Madrid, Betty started off the next bright morning for Valencia. Without any difficulty, she’d quickly recruited four of her new adventurous friends to make the long drive with her, and Miss Jacobsen had kindly offered the use of an ambulance. Just make sure to turn around and head straight back to Madrid once you deliver Mrs. Pack, she’d insisted.

  It was late in the hot summer afternoon when the ambulance drove into Valencia. Betty had no plan, not even a specific clue as to Carlos’s whereabouts. All she had to go on, she realized as she finally gave the mission some careful thought, was a rumor spread by an old peasant. How would Enrique know? She was sure he meant well, but now, mulling his information over, she began to question its credibility. Who were his sources? This was probably another wild goose chase. She’d been incredibly naïve to have run off in such sudden pursuit.

  The immediate problem, though, was where to go. When nothing else popped into her mind, she told the boys to drop her at the chancery.

  The ambulance pulled away, and she was left alone on the street with her small suitcase.

  Then she saw John Leche coming up the block straight toward her like a man on his own mission. He’ll order me to return to France, Betty thought.

  “It’s wonderful to see you again,” said the minister, taking Betty by surprise. “But you look thin. Didn’t they feed you? Come along upstairs and tell me about yourself.”

  Gin and tonics were poured, and Betty offered a glimpse into the harrowing nights she had experienced over the last month. Leche listened, asked a few sympathetic questions, and then in an instant his mood turned.

  “I received a cable from the ambassador,” he began with a new formality. “Sir Henry asked me to report on you. His orders were to make arrangements for your immediate return.”

  Betty said nothing.

  Leche pressed on. “Well, I suppose I ought to think about getting you home now.”

  “I wish I knew why you are trying to chuck me out again,” she snapped. “I need three or four more days at the very least in Valencia before I can even think of going home.”

  Leche rose from his chair and moved swiftly toward her. For all Betty knew, he was going to clamp handcuffs around her wrists and call for the chancery guards to drive her to the airport.

  Instead he placed one hand tenderly on her cheek.

  “Betty, are you going to be stupid forever? Are you blind? I haven’t any intention of chucking you out. When I said home, I didn’t mean your home in France. But home with me.”

  ON THE DRIVE OUT OF the city to Las Palmeras, Leche took Betty’s hand. A long, thin finger traced a smooth path across her palm. “Tell me what is on your mind, Betty. You aren’t going to evade me any more, are you?”

  Betty knew what Leche wanted. Now he’d need to know what she wanted in return. If her mission were to have any chance, frankness would be the only way.

  “No, John, I will not evade you—if you do not fight me. As to what is on my mind, it is this.” She told him about Carlos, about her deep and complete love. It was her long search to find him that had brought her back to Valencia.

  Lech
e became very still. He did not try to hide his disappointment. A tight mask fell over his face.

  “Betty,” he said at last, “tell me one thing. Is Carlos the only man you have ever loved deeply in the whole of your life?”

  “Yes,” said Betty. “Oh yes. I can say that with all my soul.”

  They drove in silence the rest of the way.

  LECHE IGNORED BETTY DURING DINNER. The attractive secretary had been restored to her place next to the minister, and Betty was seated far down the table.

  Betty picked at her food. Perhaps her candor had been a mistake. She had thought it would win Leche’s cooperation. He’d have seen through false promises, she’d believed. Now she decided she’d been foolish.

  After the meal, though, Leche abandoned his pretty dinner companion and approached Betty. He suggested they go for a walk. He led the way, and they headed aimlessly down the beach as the waves lapped against the sand. The high night sky was illuminated by the diffuse glow of the bombs falling in the distance on Valencia. They strolled side by side, very close to one another, but in silence.

  That afternoon Betty had said all there was to say. There was no longer any reason to talk.

  Leche reached out for her hand. He held it tightly for a moment. Then he raised it to his lips and kissed her fingers, one soft kiss for each.

  “I don’t know how to let you go,” he said.

  After a while, he walked her back to her room. Betty closed the door, but through the window she could see him. He stood motionless, looking straight out into the deep, dark sea. At last Betty drew the curtain closed and went to bed.

  Without Leche’s help, she doubted she’d be able to find Carlos. She had taken a gamble, and she had lost. She fell into a fitful sleep.

  “I don’t know how much later”—Betty would vividly remember to Hyde while also trying to reach her own understanding of that night and all the other nights that followed—“but I wakened from a deep sleep to an exquisite anguish that I did not, at first, understand. My body had been moved and I lay wrapped in John’s strong arms.