Winter in Madrid Read Online Free PDF

lurched through him. He scanned the pale tired faces of his fellow passengers. He supposed any one of them might be a spy – what could you tell from people’s looks? The photo kept coming back to his mind: Sandy’s confident smile, the Clark Gable moustache. The train lurched slowly on through the tunnels.
    I T HAD BEEN Rookwood that gave Harry his identity. His father, a barrister, had been blown to pieces on the Somme when Harry was six years old, and his mother had died in the influenza epidemic the winter the First War – as people were starting to call the last war – ended. Harry still had their wedding photograph and often looked at it. His father, standing outside the church in a morning suit, looked very like him: dark and solid and dependable-looking. His arm was round Harry’s mother, who was fair like Cousin Will, curly tresses falling round her shoulders under a wide-brimmed Edwardian hat. They were smiling happily into the camera. The picture had been taken in bright sunlight and was slightly overexposed, making haloes of light around their figures. Harry had little memory of them; like the world of the photograph they were a vanished dream.
    After his mother died, Harry had gone to live with Uncle James, his father’s elder brother, a professional army officer wounded in the first battles of 1914. It had been a stomach wound, nothing you couldsee, but Uncle James’s innards troubled him constantly. His discomfort worsened an already peppery disposition and was a constant source of worry to Aunt Emily, his nervous, anxious wife. When Harry came to their house in the pretty Surrey village they were only in their forties, but they seemed much older already, like a pair of anxious, fussy pensioners.
    They were kind to him, but Harry had always felt unwanted. They were childless and never seemed quite to know what to do with him. Uncle James would clap him on the shoulder, almost knocking him over, and ask heartily what he was playing at today, while his aunt worried endlessly about what he should eat.
    Occasionally he went to stay with Aunt Jenny, his mother’s sister and Will’s mother. She had been devoted to his mother and found it difficult to be reminded of her, although she showered him, guiltily perhaps, with food parcels and postal orders when he went to school.
    As a child Harry had been taught by a tutor, a retired teacher his uncle knew. He spent much of his free time roaming the lanes and woods around the village. There he met the local boys, sons of farmers and farriers, but though he played cowboys and Indians and hunted rabbits with them he was always apart: Harry the Toff. ‘Say “awful”, Harry,’ they would goad him. ‘
Or-ful, or-ful
.’
    One summer day when Harry came home from the fields, Uncle James called him into his study. He was just twelve. There was another man there, standing by the window, the sun directly behind him so that at first he was just a tall shadow framed by dust motes. ‘I’d like you to meet Mr Taylor,’ Uncle James said. ‘He teaches at my old school. My
alma mater
. That’s the Latin right, eh?’ And to Harry’s surprise he laughed nervously, like a child.
    The man moved forward and took Harry’s hand in a firm grip. He was tall and thin and wore a dark suit. Black hair receded from a widow’s peak on his high forehead and keen grey eyes studied him from behind a pair of pince-nez.
    ‘How do you do, Harry.’ The voice was sharp. ‘You’re a bit of a ragamuffin, aren’t you?’
    ‘He’s been running a little wild,’ Uncle James said apologetically.
    ‘We’ll soon tidy you up if you come to Rookwood. Would you like to go to Public School, Harry?’
    ‘I don’t know, sir.’
    ‘Your tutor’s report is good. Do you like rugger?’
    ‘I’ve never played, sir. I play football with the boys in the village.’
    ‘Rugger’s much better. A gentleman’s game.’
    ‘Rookwood was your father’s old school as well as mine,’ Uncle James