That was a gnarled old olive tree, on a slight mound, that had probably been there since the Romans ruled. Being above ground was not comfortable – quite the reverse – but it gave him a better view if the cloud should break, and he knew from experience a crawling intruder rarely looked skywards, too intent on avoiding noise by taking care with what lay in front of him. Clambering up and lodging himself between two branches, his mood, a far from happy one, was not improved as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall.

Even with eyes well accustomed to the dark there was nothing to be seen; it was all about listening, getting accustomed to the sounds that occurred naturally – croaking frogs, barking dogs, as well as raindrops hitting leaves and the chirping insects hiding under them – making sure his thoughts, which were unavoidable, did not distract him from his purpose.

CHAPTER NINE

The looks he got when he came back in the morning were close to sneers; nothing had happened, no threat had appeared and every one of the Spaniards had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. Nor had any orders come to move on and by which route, which surprised him, given the supposed need to get to Saragossa quickly. Still, it was their fight, not his – the man in command, this Colonel Villabova, might have information not vouchsafed to Laporta; and if it was military incompetence, that was not something to which he was unaccustomed.

Years of training allowed Cal Jardine to get by on catnaps, one of which he took after a less-than-sustaining breakfast of unleavened bread and a fruit compote washed down with water; if there had been coffee, which he and his men had become accustomed to in Barcelona, the Falangists had pinched it. Then he spent twenty minutes lying dead flat on a warm stone, his hat pulled down to keep the sun out of his eyes and out to the world.

By the time he came round, Vince had drawn from the well and heated some water, insisting that the boys should wash and shave, even if some of them barely had the necessary growth; it paid to stay clean when you could because, when it came to a fight, you could spend a long time between opportunities.

He had also been at them before they went to sleep, insisting they washed their socks and inspected their feet and also showing them that a properly stuffed knapsack made a good pillow. Then he had ensured that, while their rifles were loaded, the safety catches were set to off.

Next they were lined up in singlets and shorts for exercises, which actually produced outright laughter from the anarchist contingent, but there were no complaints from the boys doing the leaps, squats and press-ups; they all took their own fitness seriously, and one, called Bernard, a marathon runner, had actually set off to do his usual long wake-up jog before breakfast, heading, as advised by Vince, due east. After exercises, given there were still no orders to move, Cal got them dressed and took them out into the open for training in fire and movement, the former in dumbshow.

‘My friends think you are a mad Englishman,’ Florencia said, as she joined Cal, with an air that half indicated she agreed with them.

‘I hope you told them I am not either.’

‘They wonder how can a man spend the night lying in a ditch when he has a woman to keep him warm.’

‘I was up a tree, actually,’ Cal replied, rubbing an ache that came from the position he had been obliged to adopt and maintain, while wondering if the complaint was her own.

‘And now you want these boys to run around and play at soldiers?’

‘Before you become a soldier it helps to play, Florencia. You learn how to stay alive. Shall I explain what we are trying to do?’

She shrugged. ‘If you like.’

‘We have a body of young men who, in the parlance of the British army, do not know their arse from their elbow.’ There was a pause while Florencia filed that away; she was a keen collector of idioms in English, and in the past had made Cal write them down for her. ‘Now, when it comes to tactics, some of them will be clever and some of them will be idiots, and the first trick is to make sure in a battle it is the clever leading the idiots and not the other way round.’

He nearly added that in most armies, not least the one he had served in, you found out, especially after a long period of peace, that the reverse was generally the case, viz. that pompous idiot who had led his men out of the Parque Barracks. Putting that thought aside he pointed to a party moving along a drystone wall at a crouch.

‘What we are trying to do is to spot the natural leaders.’

‘You lead them, and your Vince.’

‘We can’t be everywhere, so we will break our group into five units of ten men, four of which will be rifle squads, each with a leader and an assistant, the rest we will use as a reserve under my personal supervision, also as messengers, medics and reinforcements. If we get machine guns, and I hope we do, each rifle squad will have a two-man gun team.’

The one leading the squad being put through its paces had reached a corner and peered round, his hand held up to stop his companions. They obeyed, but one of the lads could not resist raising his own head to look, which occasioned a furious bark from Vince, who then walked over to the leader and spoke quietly.

‘Vince will be telling him that in such a situation he should have added a gesture to keep their heads down, not just signal to stay still. Come on, let’s get closer and listen in.’

‘OK,’ Vince said, loud enough to be heard even before they got close. ‘All have a shufti and tell me, once you leave the protection of this wall, where would you go?’

Cal pointed to the low rise on which he had spent the previous night, talking quietly. ‘For the purposes of this, we have said that is where the enemy is and the task is to take possession of it. That’s part of the basics whichever side you’re on, always seek to dominate the ground.’

Ask a question of those without experience, as Vince was doing now, and not everyone will answer. The ones who do, at the most basic level, are the lads you want to sort out, as long as their answer isn’t downright stupid, which is what came from one of Vince’s boxers, a spotty-faced kid called Sid, who picked out an area of sparse trees with gnarled but thin trunks in an open field. The response took Cal back to his own basic training.

‘A million sperm,’ Vince sighed, with a shake of the head, ‘and the egg got you.’

‘What aboot that wee gully o’er there?’ suggested a youngster who had been sent to the Olympiad by his local East Lothian mining branch.

Vince nodded. ‘And how, Jock, would you get from where you are to where you need to be?’

‘Am’ no sure, Vince, ’cause I think if we just rushed we aw’ get shot.’

‘You’re right, so let’s sort out how to do it.’

Vince got them back behind the wall, with the kid called Jock at the apex, where he crouched down himself to speak to him. ‘What you do, as the squad leader, is stay still and select the pair you’re goin’ to send ahead first. The squad will go two at a time. The rest you tell to give covering fire, but you must say where the target is and how many rounds to fire, understand?’

Young Jock nodded nervously as Vince demonstrated the necessary hand signals and verbal commands, adding, ‘Look, son, this is an exercise, not the real thing. Nobody gets killed if you get it wrong. OK?’ Another nervous nod followed. ‘You send two men at a run, with four selected to give covering fire. Nobody moves till everybody knows what’s happenin’ and has made it plain they understand. On your command they move and at speed. Now, who would you select to go first?’

There was a pause, before Jock replied, ‘Tommy and Ed are hundred-yard sprinters.’

That got an upraised thumb. ‘Covering fire?’

That occasioned another pause before he tapped the last line of stones and Vince was patient. ‘The last four in the group, ’cause the buggers will be watching the corner.’