Frontier Passage Read online

  “Sure. Do you know that whenever one of the foreign embassies here puts through a long-distance call, the Inter at Bayonne Exchange makes a gramophone record of it?”

  Mr. Oldhead was amused but incredulous.

  “And who gets the records?” he asked.

  “Whoever’ll pay most for them. You’re in France,” said Mr. Crumpaun crisply. “There’s a reason for the spying, though,” he went on. “It’s always worse in a civil war, where you have families and relations all mixed up, some on one side and some on the other, and no one can ever really quite trust anyone else. So they all go around trying to keep tabs on one another, just in case. And where you have a complete breakdown of communications, and all these rumours, the suspicions and the spying get worse than ever. This is the most domestic war in history, I should say.”

  Mr. Oldhead accepted this explanation with approving interest, but when the conversation got back onto gossip and atrocities, he fidgeted off. Mrs. Oldhead and Rosemary however stayed on for a little while—they were both thoroughly enjoying themselves. More Press-men were pointed out to them: Newport of the Blare, sandy and small; Hamilton of the Epoch, tall and grey-haired, on his way to Burgos, now waiting at St. Jean-de-Luz for his permit to cross the frontier at Irún. Mr. Crumpaun, who seemed to like imparting information quite as much as collecting it, explained that the Epoch, like one or two of the other larger papers, had one correspondent in Burgos to cover Franco’s activities, one at Madrid with the Republicans, and a third—a dejected-looking red-faced person called Crossman—at St.-Jean. “Crossman picks up the bits, like the rest of us; we don’t get much here,” he explained with his cheerful chuckle.

  It was time for Rosemary and her mother to leave; Mr. Oldhead still insisted abroad on lunching at his home hour of 1.15. The two Englishwomen walked down the draughty little street towards their hotel, at each crossing meeting soft, salty puffs coming in from the sea—past the abandoned and dilapidated little Casino, with its two absurd and delightful tiled cupolas, and the fragile charm of its broken yellow stucco, past the cinema posters stuck on its aged railings, from which the paint, rotted by the salt-laden air, was powdering rather than peeling off. On the way they talked companionably about the morning’s experiences. To Mrs. Oldhead, fresh from an extremely dull suburban existence, life on the Spanish frontier as it had revealed itself that morning struck a note of pure fantasy, crazily improbable—it was so unlike life as she knew it that it seemed to her merely funny; to Rosemary, on the other hand, whose conception of human existence owed at least as much to the cinema as to anything else it was delightfully thrilling but not in the least improbable.

  “The Duquesa does look tartish, whatever Daddy may say,” the girl chattered on. Mrs. Oldhead said that she thought Mrs. Walter B. Jones looked like a film-star. “Oh no, Mummie—only her hair. Her teeth would be hopeless on a film, and so would her face—it’s just a blob.” Mrs. Oldhead laughed, but bowed to youth’s superior technical knowledge. Coming out on the little circular space above the sea-wall, where cars park in front of the Hôtel Grande Bretagne, they paused as usual to look over the bay. Above the long mole which blocks the centre of the entrance great masses of white spray, like flowers or mushrooms, appeared suddenly and soundlessly—hung a moment against the blue of sea and sky, and sank again; though it was a fairly still day, there was a swell outside, and a couple of motor sardine-boats shooting across to the exit on the right of the mole began to dip and dance as they approached the opening; they bounced giddily out of sight behind the break-water below the old pharos, which comes out towards the mole to protect the northern curve of the shore. A low steady thundering came from this break-water, where the tide runs strongly. Rosemary narrowed her lids against the glare, snuffed the strong air like a dog, and with a sigh followed her mother in to lunch.

  The Hôtel Grande Bretagne was built in the days of Queen Victoria, when the regular winter sojourns in Biarritz of the Prince of Wales brought an annual flow of English visitors to the Basque Coast; and its solid, comfortable, slightly shabby furnishings recalled that epoch, if they did not indeed date from it. The hall was always dark and the dining-room always light, but as no windows were ever opened in either, the same stuffy warmth at all times pervaded both. Crumpaun was fond of cutting a joke about this—“The hotel’s air-conditioned,” he would say; “The air’s in the same condition now as it was when it was built.” The competent dapper little Basque manager, Swiss-trained like so many of his countrymen, did not think this at all funny, but he smiled his steely smile all the same; journalists were good clients, they brought custom, and the most lucrative sort of custom at that—drinks. And nothing would induce him to open his windows—most of them wouldn’t open anyhow, they were stuck fast by far too many layers of paint: Victorian paint, Edwardian paint, Georgian paint. Rosemary, sitting at lunch, eating the rich unwonted food in impatient boredom, noticed how these layers of paint had softened all the angles of the woodwork round their window to a mellow, albeit rather shabby smoothness; beyond the window, with its thick lace curtains, she watched a black and white cat, followed by a ginger admirer, going in and out of the railings of the old Casino below the cinema posters, and then romping elegantly on the deserted patch of lawn among the torn and faded fragments of earlier posters, thrown there carelessly when the bills were changed. It was all very like St.-Jean, she thought—an old, haphazard, cheerful little town, the tourist part of it falling untidily into decay, the native part leading its own life with as much zest and indifference as the cats. But she liked it: undoubtedly being here was fun; only the meals were awful, especially lunch, when they and an old parson were the only people, eating in that hot bright room. She wished the journalists didn’t always lunch out, and so much later; it was much more amusing at dinner, when they were there to be watched.

  About the middle of the afternoon, when Mr. Oldhead had rested, Mrs. Oldhead had read the Epoch (she read the Burgos article with new interest, having seen Hamilton, the Burgos correspondent, at the Bar Basque that morning) and Rosemary had fidgeted over her Spanish Grammar, they prepared as usual to set out for a walk. In the hall of the hotel they encountered Mr. Crumpaun, cigar in hand, bright and jolly after his morning of drinks and a late lunch.

  “Like a drive?” he enquired. “I have to go over to Irún, in case this Non-intervention party comes out—they say he may be along this afternoon. Care to come? Lots of room in the car.”

  Mr. Oldhead did not care to—he had his elaborate camera strung round his shoulder, and all his little special gadgets in his pocket; he was going to do some photography, he explained. But Rosemary and her mother cared to very much indeed, and Mr. Oldhead was not really sorry to be relieved of his family for the afternoon—now he could pause, potter, pace and screw up his eyes, undisturbed by their patient perchings on banks and walls. So he walked off along the front alone, and Rosemary and Mrs. Oldhead squashed into the back of the hired car, one on each side of Mr. Crumpaun’s cheerful bulk, and set out for Irún.

  To island-dwellers like the English, frontiers have not the same significance that they bear for continentals. Mrs. Oldhead’s and Rosemary’s personal experience of frontiers had so far been limited to Swiss customs officials coming into their second-class carriage at 3.00 in the morning at Vallorbes; they had never seen one in their lives, and when Mr. Crumpaun’s car pulled up in the long straight street that approaches the International Bridge at Irún, they got out and looked about them with the liveliest interest. The bridge certainly looked the part perfectly. It was closed at either end by wire barriers, painted red and white; as far as the middle, tricolor flags fluttered from little masts on either parapet, beyond that hung the red and gold of Spain—below flowed the muddy Bidassoa. A group of journalists already hung about the passport office on the left of the French barrier, others were chatting to the functionaries from the police and customs depot on the right—their cars extended up the street in a long shiny line. “No sign of him yet,” they
told Mr. Crumpaun. Mr. Crumpaun lit another cigar and beguiled the time of waiting by pointing out various items of interest to the two Oldheads. Above the bridge the Bidassoa curved between flat damp fields; along the Spanish bank little sentry-boxes stood at intervals, and between them soldiers in indeterminate uniforms, with rifles, strolled to and fro. “They look bored,” said Rosemary. “Guess they are,” said Mr. Crumpaun. “They’re so bored they’ll shoot at anything—in the summer they shot a girl who went swimming and got farther across than they liked.” He took them up the road a little, and showed them Fuenterrabia standing up, dark, imposing, a little sinister, across the shining estuary. Then they went back to the bridge. There was a stir now round the barrier—a priest had come up in a shabby car; his luggage was taken out and piled onto a wheelbarrow, and after his papers were examined the wire barrier was rolled back a little and he went across, followed by his luggage, wheeled behind him by a porter. Mr. Crumpaun explained that even train passengers were not allowed to remain in their coaches when the Sud Express crossed the railway bridge, 100 yards downstream; they all had to get out and cross on foot, with their baggage on wheelbarrows, of which a dismal little fleet stood outside the Customs office.

  A car now drove down the street, and pulled up; the uniformed chauffeur got out and showed the passports on one side of the road, the triptyque on the other—the barrier was rolled still further back, there was a little saluting, and the car passed through and onto the bridge.

  “Who’s that?” Rosemary asked.

  “The German Ambassador at San Sebastián—didn’t you see the C.D. on the car?”

  Rosemary hadn’t, and wouldn’t have known what it meant if she had—she had never seen a live diplomatist in her life. She watched the German car pause before the barrier at the further end of the bridge, while a group of officials examined the papers for the second time, and produced a large ledger-like book, turned the pages slowly, closed it again, and eventually allowed the car to proceed. The whole business of crossing had taken nearly a quarter of an hour.

  “Some business getting into Spain, even for diplomats,” Crumpaun commented.

  “Who can go in?” Mrs. Oldhead asked.

  “Only people with salvo conductos, and only those if their names are on the list—they keep a list of the people who have salvos, but the chap can’t always find their names,” said Mr. Crumpaun. “Not very literate, some of these little Spanish officials.”

  Rosemary, with the long sight of youth, had been studying the various uniforms of the group at the far end of the bridge, and now asked Mr. Crumpaun about them—“Who are the two men in dark green, with those shiny blacks hats turned up at the back?”

  Mr. Crumpaun, always obliging, got out his Zeiss glasses and explained. The men in dark green were the Guardia Civil, the old police; the youths in red tam-o’-shanters were Requetes; the others were Falangistas. Rosemary was thrilled at hearing the Spanish pronunciation, Guardia Thivil and Falanhistas—she had read about “Falangists” and recognised the word. “It is fun,” she sighed. What a day!—journalists, beautiful if tartish duchesses, sentries with rifles, ambassadors, a real frontier, bounded by a river and guarded by armed men. Glorious!

  Mr. Crumpaun’s preoccupation with the far end of the bridge had prevented him from noticing a fresh stir behind him—another car had driven up, and the journalists, bored with waiting, gathered round it while the papers were examined; he took down his glasses in time to see the Duquesa de las Illas get out of it, and start to cross the bridge on foot, a striking and rather incongruous figure in her fashionable black.

  “Hullo! What’s she after?” he asked his colleagues.

  “She can’t be going over for good, because she’s left the car, and she’s got no luggage,” said Hever.

  Crumpaun put up his field glasses again and watched the progress of the black figure. At the far side, by the barrier, his glasses and Rosemary’s hawklike sight showed a meeting between the Duquesa and a little old woman, also in black; another barrow with luggage on it was let through the Spanish barrier, and the little procession trooped back again towards the French side. This tiny incident let loose a flood of speculation and rumour among the waiting journalists, hungry for news; they fell on it like a swarm of minnows on a piece of bread, pulling it this way and that. The old woman was the Duquesa’s mother, her aunt, her father in disguise, a famous spy. The Blare man and some of the others put up their cameras and photographed the Duquesa and her companion as they approached—she paid no attention to them, and after a further prolonged examination of the newcomer’s papers and effects by the French frontier officials, the party entered the car and drove off.

  Mr. Crumpaun now looked at his watch, ejaculated that they had been there over an hour and a half, and after a consultation with his colleagues decided that it was no good waiting any longer for the emissary of Non-intervention. He suggested having a drink. “We might go up to Biriatou—there’s a pretty view.” He invited Mr. Hever of Hooters to accompany them, and they drove off.

  Biriatou is one of the most amusing of the French Basque villages. It is perched high upon a shelf of hill overhanging the Bidassoa, and is so cramped for space that the tiny square is also the fronton, or pelota-ground; deep-eaved Basque houses with chocolate-brown shutters enclose it on two sides; on the third, beyond a low wall on which the spectators lean during matches, is a flagged space a few feet higher than the fronton, set with chairs and small tables—the fore-court of the inn; beyond that again a flight of steps between large bay-trees leads up to the white façade of the village church, which crowns the whole. A stage designer, bent on producing a décor which should represent the Pays Basque in the smallest possible space, could hardly improve on the lay-out of Biriatou. The Oldheads were enchanted with it. But Mr. Crumpaun did not settle down at the tables below the church steps—he led his party right through the inn, where home-cured hams hung from blackened beams, and out onto a little terrace beyond, roofed with a trellis of vines, where he ordered wine, relit his cigar, and prepared to enjoy himself. The late afternoon sun poured in onto the rough wooden tables; it was deliciously warm. Rosemary and Mrs. Oldhead leaned over the vine-clad railings and looked at the view. Immediately below them flowed the Bidassoa, winding through the hills, with more sentry-boxes along the Spanish bank—downstream, where the valley broadened out, the late sun made a hazy glory of the wooded slopes, and lit up the white houses and farms on the French side. Rosemary sighed again with pleasure. The bridge had been thrilling; this was beautiful.

  Mr. Hever of Hooters was a tall emaciated young man with long yellow hair, a long mediaeval face, and a gloomy expression; he wore baggy grey flannel trousers and a terrible tweed jacket, but his voice and manner suggested a long, expensive, and conventional education, probably at Cambridge. When the red wine was brought, in an unlabelled and uncorked bottle, he sniffed it, drank, sniffed again, held his glass up to the glowing light beyond the vine-leaves, and said abruptly—

  “What’s this?”

  Mr. Crumpaun, who had also taken a drink, said—

  “Spanish.”

  “It’s very good,” said Mrs. Oldhead, who thought Mr. Hever’s question rather unmannerly.

  “Much too good to be French vin du pays,” said Hever. “What do they charge for it?”

  “About five francs a bottle,” said Crumpaun, with his jolly chuckle. “Smuggled, of course.”

  The wine was indeed good—strong but not rough, a little heavy, as if burdened with the flowery sweetness and fragrance that hung about it. Hever sniffed again and drank again. “Damned good,” he said. “And sixpence a bottle! Baptême!”

  “I suppose they smuggled it in before the war began,” said Mrs. Oldhead innocently, glancing down at the sentries patrolling the banks of the Bidassoa.

  “Not they. Goes on all the time, up in the mountains. The hardy Basques aren’t going to go without their good vino tinto for a little thing like a war,” said Crumpaun heartily; “and t
he Hispanos want to sell it, too. Suits everyone.” He started imparting information again. “They smuggle currency as well, any amount of it.”

  “How do they get it over?” Rosemary asked, her eyes big with excitement. Smuggling too!—she was drinking smuggled wine!

  Crumpaun smiled benevolently at her eager face.

  “The wine’s run in skins generally, on people’s backs, over the high paths. But they say dogs bring the money mostly—dogs and sheep.”

  “But how?” Rosemary was almost beside herself with thrills.

  “Little packets strapped round the dogs’ necks, and pinned to the sheep’s fleeces, under their bellies. Easy enough for a dog to run to and fro, or sheep to be driven from one pasture to another. There’s a special convention about frontier grazing-rights up at places like St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and all along there beyond La Rhune.”

  “We’re going up La Rhune to-morrow, if it’s fine,” Rosemary interjected.

  “Then catch any sheep you see and look under its tummy—you may get some black pesetas,” he teased her.

  “What is the black rate now?” Hever asked.

  “Hamilton’s getting 127.”

  Mrs. Oldhead had to know what black pesetas were—she was almost as curious as Rosemary about all these strange matters. Mr. Hever took upon himself to explain, in his high Cambridge voice.

  “The official exchange rate for pesetas in Spain is about fifty to the pound….”

  “Fifty-three,” from Crumpaun.

  “But there is an unofficial rate, as always in countries with a regulated currency,” Hever flowed on, disregarding him—“which is much higher. For some reason it is usually called the Black Rate. It operates inside as well as outside the country.”

  “But why should people want to get two and a half times as few pounds for their pesetas?” Rosemary put in. Hever regarded her with faint approval.