My Heart Forgets To Beat - Excerpt

My Heart Forgets To Beat

Part One: April, 1937

Valentine girl with boots and balls

 His kisses will say, “I want you, Laura” and today more than their tongues will speak. Afterwards hand-in-hand they will enter the Red Star café and the comrades may feast their eyes.

Meanwhile, Vaughan holds two cans of caviar under her nose, courtesy of Uncle Joe,

Just an itsy-bitsy picnic! Look, a bunch of the sweet onions; and here, fresh bread from the company stores. Already packed is a flask of red wine drawn from the oak of La Mancha, and a tin of Ukrainian cigarettes. She gives a cry,

Ah, the ones you bend in case the tobacco falls out.

If that is not enough, into the knapsack he carries everywhere like a donkey go water & biscuits, billycan, notebook, fountain pen and the heavy old revolver he bought off a smuggler in Barcelona. He glances up and smiles,

It's not too far into the countryside. Not too far? On foot, you should note, across fields crawling with enemies. He averts his eyes, Our own little reconnaissance sortie, my little brown dove. What a schemer! They will leave town, find trees for shade and grass for their behinds. He will ply her with food and drink, and when her patience is at an end, prove his manhood. Everyone knows what caviar is good for.

Laura, he chides in abysmal Spanish learnt from the poems of Lorca, Drunken gendarmes are beating on the doors. But it is not the fascists we should fear, may they go to the devil. It is the spring, which has warmed the air and opened the first magnolias. He wags his finger, Beware of the soil, which is cold and damp as a riverbank at dawn. That said, he produces a Moroccan rug, borrowed for you-know-what. He winks, rolls it up and ties it under the sack with the knots you pull. What kind of man cares for such detail? Can he be the possessor of testicles? She yawns and stretches. His answer is to smile as though all is normal. But today will see them in action. She leans back against a wall and rolls her eyes,

Aiee, the birds have flown. Mercifully, he shoulders rifle and binoculars and off they set, like poachers of geese.

*

Laura had ridden the fast passenger service that still ran some days between Alicante and Madrid. The irony was how the rest of the British volunteers were at the station, waiting to board the next train back to the coast. They would spend their first leave since Jarama loafing on the seaside, jammy blighters. Not Comrade Vaughan! The Welshman from Liverpool had drawn the short straw. And was he put out? Burn his union card? Did he heck-as-like. As soon as the order was posted, he'd nipped smartly over to the post office, bribed the censor and got off a telegram to his girl,

LEAVE CANCELLED STOP YOU COME HERE STOP VT

In six months, they'd met up twice, exchanged post cards and the odd crackling telephone call. They were owed, all right. After dark, Laura wired back,

HAVE TWO DAY PASS ARRIVE TOMORROW TRAIN LL

The whistle blew and in she rolled.

He weighed up the odds. On the pro side, the moon-faced girl came when called, jumped from the carriage and possessively took his arm. On the contra, she was barely half his age. Nineteen-years of smouldering cheek and a tongue to kill. He hung his head as he spoke, crawling under the trip wires and snipers of no-man's-land. Whenever he glanced up, the whites of her eyes flashed. How the brows of her angled. Why? Because he'd suggested following the tracks to the far side of town? An hour's walk at most. The quickest way into the countryside. She didn't seem impressed by the packing, either. Weren't his treats good enough? No English chocolate. The ends of her lips forked down. She crossed her arms and leaned back, shoulder blades against the wall. Ravishing! In dun-coloured overalls and floppy black beret, she managed the look of a Paris mannequin. The pose of her, pouting at the expedition on foot. His kingdom for a motorcycle! Then again, she could have raised the roof in Spanish, or worse still, screeched at him in Valencian. Give her a smile. Keep your powder dry, boyo. After all, following the railway wasn't such a bad idea; not many folk about. Slowly, slowly catch your monkey.