Lloyd nodded. Every discussion about the government ended the same way: do we have to do everything the Soviets want just because they are the only people who will sell us guns?

They walked down the hill. Lenny said: ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea, now, is it?’

‘Yes, please. Two lumps of sugar in mine.’

It was a standing joke. Neither of them had had tea for months.

They came to their camp by the river. Lenny’s platoon had taken over a little cluster of crude stone buildings that had probably been cowsheds until the war drove the farmers away. A few yards upriver a boathouse had been occupied by some Germans from the 11th International Brigade.

Lloyd and Lenny were met by Lloyd’s cousin Dave Williams. Like Lenny, Dave had aged ten years in one. He looked thin and hard, his skin tanned and dusty, his eyes wrinkled with squinting into the sun. He wore the khaki tunic and trousers, leather belt pouches and ankle-buckled boots that formed the standard-issue uniform – though few soldiers had a complete set. He had a red cotton scarf around his neck. He carried a Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle with the old-fashioned spike bayonet reversed, making the weapon less clumsy. At his belt he had a German 9mm Luger that he must have taken from the corpse of a rebel officer. Apparently he was very accurate with rifle or pistol.

‘We’ve got a visitor,’ he said excitedly.

‘Who is he?’

‘She!’ said Dave, and pointed.

In the shade of a misshapen black poplar tree, a dozen British and German soldiers were talking to a startlingly beautiful woman.

‘Oh, Duw,’ said Lenny, using the Welsh word for God. ‘She’s a sight for sore eyes.’

She looked about twenty-five, Lloyd thought, and she was petite, with big eyes and a mass of black hair pinned up and topped by a fore-and-aft army cap. Somehow her baggy uniform seemed to cling to her like an evening gown.

A volunteer called Heinz, who knew that Lloyd understood German, spoke to him in that language. ‘This is Teresa, sir. She has come to teach us to read.’

Lloyd nodded understanding. The International Brigades consisted of foreign volunteers mixed with Spanish soldiers, and literacy was a problem with the Spanish. They had spent their childhood chanting the catechism in village schools run by the Catholic Church. Many priests did not teach the children to read, for fear that in later life they would get hold of socialist books. As a result, only about half the population had been literate under the monarchy. The republican government elected in 1931 had improved education, but there remained millions of Spaniards who could not read or write, and classes for soldiers continued even in the front line.

‘I’m illiterate,’ said Dave, who was not.

‘Me, too,’ said Joe Eli, who taught Spanish literature at Columbia University in New York.

Teresa spoke in Spanish. Her voice was low and calm and very sexy. ‘How many times do you think I have heard this joke?’ she said, but she did not seem very cross.