Pantheon by Sam Bourne Read Free Book Online

chants. James heard lots of
viva
s, quickly echoed by the French communists leading the column, who began to shout
Vive le Front Populaire!
or
Vive la Republique!
But the most constant refrain was
No Pasaran!
, the slogan James would see daubed on walls and hear at rallies for most of the next year. As he and Harry walked with others from the International Brigades, diffident and surprised to be feted in such fashion, the townspeople would sometimes join in, walking among them for a block or two, before joining the crowds stretched along the pavements. They were being hailed as heroes, like the warriors of ancient myth. And they had not yet fired a shot. When they came to leave Valencia, and their train was delayed for a long while before moving off, the local women compensated them by offering free kisses to anyone who stuck his head out of the window.
    James remembered the mood of almost reckless idealism that had gripped him and his new comrades in that late summer of 1936: young men, from all over the world, united in a cause that was just and noble. And in his mind it was intertwined inseparably with the love that he carried for Florence, the spark lit during that brief, exhilarating week in Barcelona and which burned in the months afterwards. It burned even as that train took him to Albacete, the nowhere city in La Mancha where the International Brigades would have their headquarters and training camp. Though that term flattered it: there was no formal training, just a period set aside early each morning for exercise. Perhaps in a nod to the anarchists then so influential in the republic, each unit was to devise its own exercise programme with no order from any commanding officer telling them what to do. James and his group had prepared for war by playing leapfrog.
    Now slumped in his chair in Norham Gardens, the whisky doing its work, he gazed up at the mantelpiece, at the picture frame that contained no photograph but only a small, singed newspaper clipping. He had preserved it because that little piece of paper had brought Florence back to him.
    He had been on guard duty at the Albacete camp, his group having been saddled with the two am shift. The war was in its eighth week, it was late September and the nights were getting cold. A Yugoslavian comrade had passed him a shred of newspaper, urging James to use it to relight a dwindling fire. He had just put a match to it when he noticed it was in English; indeed it was a page from
The Times
. Hungry for news, he had blown out the flame so that he could scan the items: a ship lost in the Atlantic, troubles for Mr Baldwin’s government. Then a name leapt out at him.
    ‘Miss Walsingham’s withdrawal from the Games disappointed British organizers, who had believed she was a racing certainty for a gold medal, having secured her place in the final with the fastest qualifying time. But the champion swimmer said that she had never intended to compete in the last stage of the Olympic swimming competition. ‘I wanted to show Herr Hitler that his nasty little Nazis are not the best in the world, whatever they might say. Whoever comes first on Sunday will be second best – and they will know it.’
    James reached for it now, reading it again, nearly four years later, as he let a third glass of whisky warm his throat. For months that clipping had stayed in his wallet, second best to having a photograph of her. He had kept it with him until they had made contact again, kept it with him, in fact, until they had set up this house as their marital home (thanks to some help from Papa Walsingham).
    Once in its frame, it became quite a conversation piece: Florence used to like telling the story. But for James it was more than just a memento of their romance. It was also a reminder to him of his own naïveté. He kept it lest he forget that sometimes – often – she was right and he was wrong.
    He had written to Florence immediately, addressing his letters to her Oxford college. He