Back to Battle by Max Hennessy Read Free Book Online

her neck. But she also had a sensible straight back and a splendid figure and she’d already performed wonders getting Spanish children to safety along the Basque coast.
    ‘The people who’re left are such a silly lot,’ she said angrily. ‘There’s an elderly major and his wife, and Mrs. Fotheringay–’
    ‘She sounds formidable,’ Kelly grinned.
    ‘She has a dog and she won’t leave without it. There are nine altogether, with two Spanish, one Frenchwoman and one Albanian.’
    As they left, Teresa was wearing a troubled frown and he knew there was something on her mind. Pulling her into a café for a drink, he made her tell him what it was.
    ‘Will you accept one more?’ she asked. ‘For me?’
    ‘No political figures. We’re supposed to be neutral.’
    She gave a little laugh. ‘I doubt if there’s a politician in Spain of either side worth helping. It’s my old professor. He was always inclined to air his opinions and he’s been talking too much. He’s had to hide from Chief of Police Neila.’
     
    By the time Kelly returned to the city centre, shells were dropping in the streets, and police vans, Red Cross ambulances and journalists’ cars were moving in the murk of dust they raised. The city swarmed with movement and seemed bowed under the noise of the sirens of the trawlers, which had been brought into the harbour to pick up the refugees. It was impossible to separate individuals, and he could only count hundreds of excited heads as women, children and old men piled uncontrollably aboard. The streets were stacked high with chairs, bedsteads and sagging bundles, and the sound was of marching men, the roar of motors, and the cries of awakened children.
    Troops were coming in from the front as Kelly reached the hotel, and the look on their faces showed what they thought of their chances. There was no longer any line, they said and they were retiring without a struggle, bombed mercilessly by the Germans and Italians whenever the mist lifted, so that they’d had to leave their wounded to die in the highlands behind them. A division of the Basque Army corps had resisted immovably for thirty-six hours, but the Santanderinos, who were not made of the same stuff, had left them to it and gone home in a steady stream across the coverless hills, until finally the Basques had also had more than they could take and were on their way in, too.
    By evening, most of the nuns, all dressed in ordinary clothes had appeared in twos and threes and been ferried in Jimmy’s motor boat out to Badger. There had been no sign from Teresa and there was still the problem of the two hostage Republican generals. Kelly had been unable to find anyone in authority who was interested in them and, in desperation, he tried the sentries on the quay.
    ‘Who’s your superior officer?’ he asked.
    The man grinned. ‘Anybody with a bigger gun than I have,’ he said.
    In the end they brought the two men from Badger and turned them loose on the quay. It seemed a bit like pushing them out of the frying pan into the fire because it was clearly not going to be long before Santander fell, and the Nationalists weren’t noted for showing much mercy.
    Back aboard Badger, a sherry party for the nuns was being thrown in the wardroom and they appeared to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.
    ‘Ought to try ‘em on gin, sir,’ Smart suggested. ‘They’d probably be quite lively.’
    ‘I’m going back for the British contingent now,’ Kelly said. ‘If there’s bombing, don’t wait. Jimmy’ll bring ’em out.’
    There had still been no message from Teresa and he was growing worried, but he knew that if he went to the Presidencia again it could cause trouble for her.
    The following day the weather was like summer in England and nobody seemed to have accepted that the place was dying. The offensive had started three days before and the Nationalists were already half-way to the city, but, though the government had ordered the shutting down