Ventures into the Spanish past

The complex plots of C. J. Sansom’s novel revolve around the adventures in Spain during the civil war and its aftermath of three old boys of a fictional public school. Harry Brett comes from an army family, prospers at school and is elected a fellow of a Cambridge college. Bernie Piper is a working-class scholarship boy who regards public schools as machines for grinding out compliant servants of bourgeois capitalism. Leaving in disgust, he joins the Communist party, volunteers for the International Brigades and is presumed killed at the battle of Jarama in February 1937. Sandy Forsyth, son of a bishop, detests school as restricting his activities on the racetracks and in London brothels. Fully aware of the brutal repression of the Francoist regime, his motto is ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do’ and he prospers as a shady businessman in a corrupt society.

British intelligence services in Spain were engaged, as we now know, in bribing Spanish generals to keep Spain from becoming Hitler’s ally in the second world war. They become interested in a gold mine, one of Sandy’s business ventures, which would supply Franco with much needed foreign credit. Harry is recruited to spy on Sandy, his old school friend. In Spain he meets Barbara who had fallen deeply in love with Bernie; thinking him dead after being wounded at Jarama, she is rescued from desperation and depression by Sandy whose mistress she becomes. Later, learning he is alive in a Francoist concentration camp, she plans to engineer his escape. It all ends in a blood-bath. The Francoist intelligence services had followed Barbara’s plans from the start. Barbara, Harry and Bernie escape to Madrid, taking refuge in the British embassy. Sandy, who has turned up to murder Bernie, fiercely jealous of him as Barbara’s former lover, vanishes.