Cal knew he was in a rear area, the town of Tarancón, that he had been in a coma for three weeks and the doctor, a German socialist, had told him that the Battle for Madrid had fizzled out with neither side really able to claim victory. The city was still under threat but Franco had lost too many men to press home a new assault, especially in winter. The Republicans and the Nationalists were regrouping.

Alverson pulled a bottle of Johnnie Walker from his bag and handed it over. ‘Ernie says to have this, it cures everything, and to remind you that you are due to go hunting and fishing with him as soon as the war is over.’

‘Some pain in the ass, Tyler.’

‘Yep, but then you don’t compete with the big soft bastard.’

‘Thank him for me, for everything. Tell him I’d give him another medal if I had one.’

‘Look, I sent word to London, to Vince, and he got in contact with your wife.’

‘Who rushed to my bedside,’ Cal said bitterly, then regretted it. Lizzie hated blood, hated hospitals, and half the time probably hated him for all the grief he had caused her. The idea of a woman who jumped three feet when a balloon burst coming to a war zone was risible.

‘Vince told some guy called Peter Lanchester, who I am asked to cable to say you are out of the woods, but I figure that’s your call.’

‘Doctor says I can try getting out of bed tomorrow.’

‘What you should do is get out of Spain.’

‘And ruin your scoop?’

‘There will be others, Cal, and you …’ Alverson did not finish that, but there was no doubting what he felt; going after those weapons could see him killed ‘… well, it ain’t worth it.’

‘Tell me what’s happening, everything.’

‘You planning to go home?’

‘Just tell me,’ Cal replied, so impatiently it supplied an answer to the previous question.

The truth was, not a lot was happening on the original front; it was trenches on both sides before Madrid – with Cal opining that at least they had learnt – the Nationalists holding nearly all of the western suburbs but unable to advance; likewise the defenders, who had dug in where they had no other method and erected near-impenetrable barricades in the working-class districts.

The city was being bombed daily and life was getting harder. A Nationalist assault to the north, an attempt to get across the Corunna Road, had ended up with another set of International Brigades being thrown into a mincing machine, but the enemy casualties were nearly as bad, and given the appalling weather conditions, it was no surprise the battle had descended into a stalemate.

Germany and Italy having recognised Franco’s government the previous November, the Italians had sent ground troops in divisional strength, though they were billed as volunteers, and the supplies from the fascist dictators were pouring in through Portugal, despite a protest to the League of Nations. The democracies were still observing an embargo.

‘The talk is we are in for a long haul.’

‘Do Florencia’s parents know?’

‘No idea.’

‘I need a pen and paper, Tyler, that’s a letter I have to write.’

‘You got it. I will try to stay in touch, but if the front moves so must I.’

‘You forget, I always know how to find you.’

Writing his first letter was painful, a tacit admission that Florencia was no more, even if he knew it to be true. The reply came with a photograph of her on the day she had joined the Mujeres Libres, which for the first time produced tears, not many, it was not his way, but a reflection of the depth of his feelings of loss.

Replies came from other letters: from Lizzie, ordering him home, from Vince just wishing him well and from Peter Lanchester saying basically, but kindly, he had been asking for it and if there was anything he needed, etc. Monty Redfern, typically, offered to send a private ambulance all the way to Spain if he wanted one.

Recovery was slow, at first the mere act of walking a shuffling struggle, but as his strength began to return, Jardine began to exercise, gently at first, but with an incremental daily increase. The hospital he left as quickly as the doctor would allow, beds being at a premium, and he found a room in a house to rent, one abandoned by a supporter of the generals, though he did not ask if the family had got away or been shot, and it was there that Christmas passed and a new year arrived.

There was one other thing he could work on while he fought his way back to full physical fitness – his Spanish, which given he was surrounded by locals, began to seem competent, though he could never feel comfortable with the sibilant lisp, nor reach the degree of fluency he had with the French and German he had learnt as a child and youth.

Newspapers helped and it was from them, even this far from true civilisation, that he learnt in a week-old copy of The Times of the death of Sir Basil Zaharoff, which saddened him greatly. Naturally, he followed the course of the war, the battle in the winter snows in the mountains to the north-west of Madrid, as Franco tried to cut supplies to the city, again mostly a failure given it bled the Nationalists as much as the Republicans.

By the time Franco attacked and took Málaga he was running again, feeling no pain and ready to get back to what he saw now as a duty he owed to the memory of Florencia.

Barcelona was a city that, to a Briton, blossomed early, already in mid March full of flowers that, in the colour, seemed to mock the grey mood of the city, one that Cal Jardine had to fight in his own mind as certain vistas triggered painful memories. Unable to face his deceased lover’s parents, he made straight for the headquarters of the POUM in Las Ramblas.

Getting to see Andreu Nin, even if he was no longer apparently a member of the Catalan government, was never going to be easy, alone even harder, and the offices of his Workers’ Party were really the last place to talk with him – there were too many prying eyes – nor did he feel the telephone to be secure, even if the exchange which he had helped capture was still in anarchist hands.

So he dropped off a curt note, in Spanish, referring to their original meeting, hoping that the room number at the Ritz, as well as Florencia’s name, would trigger his memory and asking that he make contact, then went back to the upper floors of the now much-depleted Ritz to wait for what was really the answer to a simple question – did he still want that for which he had asked and was he still prepared to fund it?

The reply took two frustrating days in coming and the sender had no idea how close Jardine had come to repacking his bags and seeking a way home, for to be here, staying in a room decorated exactly like the one they had shared, was to be constantly reminded of Florencia, and that, with no one to talk to, was agony.

In the end Nin showed the same level of precaution as he did; there was no call from a downstairs desk to tell him he had a visitor, just a discreet knock on the door, which when opened produced a thick envelope which was pressed into his hand. Opening it, he was surprised that what had been written was in English, though not of a very good standard, and ran over several pages.

The POUM leader was at pains to stress that matters vis-à-vis the communists had not improved, indeed they had deteriorated, this not aided by interim attempts to buy arms on the open market, and the reason the package was so thick was quite simply that Nin wanted him to know of what had been attempted and what failure they had suffered.

At every step, those with whom they dealt, usually foreign industrialists with little sympathy for the cause they were being asked to supply, demanded massive prices as well as huge bribes, first to sell any weapons at all, then to pay off the necessary officials to provide the End User Certificates that would allow the arms to be shipped to the Republic, people the Spanish negotiators never got to meet.