Tell Me Who I Am by Julia Navarro
“Tell me, Lord James, if Great Britain wins the war against Germany, what effect will it have on the rest of Europe?” Amelia said.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand...”
“I want to know if the defeat of Hitler will mean that the European powers will want to re-establish a European democracy. I want to know if you will carry on giving support to Franco and recognizing his legitimacy.”
Lord James was surprised by Amelia’s question. It was clear that she would help only if she thought she could be of some benefit to Spain, so he took a few seconds looking for the right words to use with Amelia.
“I cannot make any assurances. But Europe without Hitler would be different. The position of the Duce would not be the same in Italy, and as for Spain... it is clear that it would be very hard for Franco to lose German support. He would be seriously weakened.”
“Well, if that is the case then I suppose I would be happy to collaborate against Hitler.”
“Excellent! A very wise decision, Amelia.”
“But Amelia, you cannot do it! Uncle, you mustn’t lie to her...”
“Lie? Albert, I am not doing that at all. Amelia has done some calculating and the result is what I hoped it would be. I do not know what I can guarantee, but there will be immediate consequences in European politics if we win this war, and these consequences will spread into Spain.”
“It is enough for me that the possibility exists. What will I have to do?” Amelia asked.
“Oh, well, for the time being all you need to do is prepare yourself. You need to be trained and you need to practice your languages. What are they? Russian, French, German?”
“I speak French as well as I speak Spanish; I have few problems with German, people even say that my accent is quite good; as far as Russian is concerned I can get by, but little more. I have a good ear for languages.”
“Perfect, perfect! You will work on your Russian, and polish up your German a bit more. You’ll learn to send and receive and decipher coded messages as well as other important information techniques.”
“Amelia, I beg you to reconsider what you’re getting involved in. You don’t have any idea. And you, Uncle Paul, you have no right to trick Amelia and put her in danger for a cause that is not her own. We both know that Spain is not a priority for British foreign policy, and that even Franco is less of an irritant for you while he’s in power than the idea of a Communist government. I can’t let you trick Amelia like this.”
“Please, Albert! Do you really think I am tricking her? I wouldn’t do this if it were just you we were talking about, but Germany has become a danger for everyone, and we need to win this war. I have not said that it will mean Franco’s defeat if we win the war, all I have said is that things will be different with Hitler out of the picture. Amelia is intelligent, she knows how complex politics is.”
“It’s a bet, Albert, and in my case there is something to win and nothing to lose; I have already lost everything,” Amelia interrupted.
“If you work for Uncle Paul you will live in an underworld from which there is no escape.”
“I don’t want to take this decision knowing that you are opposed to it. Help me, Albert, please understand why I said yes.”
When they left, Lord James had another glass of port. He was content. He knew that Amelia Garayoa was a diamond in the rough. He had spent too long in Intelligence not to know who had potential to become a good agent, and he was sure of the qualities that this apparently fragile and delicate young woman possessed.
Lord James slept well that night, but Albert and Amelia stayed up till dawn, arguing.
At seven o’clock the next morning a car came from the Admiralty to pick up Amelia.
Lord James was in uniform and seemed pleased to see her.
“Come in, come in, Amelia. I’m happy that you haven’t changed your mind.”
“You think of England and I think of Spain, I hope that we can fit our interests together,” she replied.
“Of course, my dear, that is my desire as well. I will now introduce you to your instructor, Major Murray. He will get you up to speed. You need to sign a document that commits you to absolute confidentiality. We need to work out your pay as well, because this is a job.”
Major Murray was a cheerful forty-year-old who did not hide his surprise on seeing Amelia.
“How old are you, then?”
“Twenty-two.”
“You’re a girl! Does Lord James know how old you are? We can’t win the war with kids!” he complained.
“I am not a child, I assure you.”
“I have a daughter who is fifteen years old and a son who is twelve, you’re almost the same age as they are,” he said.
“Don’t worry about me, major, I’m sure I will be able to do what you ask of me.”
“The group you will be joining is made up of men and women in their thirties, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
“Show me everything I have to learn.”
Murray presented her to the rest of the group: four men and a woman, all of them British.
“You all have one thing in common, knowledge of languages,” Murray said.
Dorothy, the other woman in the group, had been a teacher until her recruitment. She was dark-haired and not very tall, about forty years old; she had an open and friendly smile, and immediately got on with Amelia.
Of the other group members, Scott was the youngest, he was thirty, and Anthony and John were past forty.
Major Murray explained their training program.
“You will learn some things together, and others depending on your qualities. This is about getting the best out of each one of you.”
Major Murray introduced them to their instructors and at lunchtime let them go, telling them to come back the next day at seven on the dot.
“Go and rest, you’ll need it.”
“Would you like to have some tea?” Dorothy asked Amelia.
Amelia accepted gladly. She wanted to go back home to talk with Albert, but she was afraid that they would have another argument.
Dorothy turned out to be a very nice person. She told Amelia that she was from Manchester, but that she had married a German, so she spoke the language very well.
“We lived in Stuttgart, but my husband died five years ago from a heart attack and I decided to come back to England. There was nothing to keep me in Germany, we didn’t have children. You can’t imagine how much I miss him, but life is like that. At least, I think I am doing something he would have liked, he couldn’t stand Hitler.”
She also told Amelia about the members of the group.
“Scott is a bachelor, the son of a diplomat, born in India, but British of course. He grew up in Berlin because his father was stationed there. He studied Semitic languages at Oxford, you know, Hebrew, Aramaic... He speaks German perfectly and also French, I think because of his family. He belongs to a very distinguished family. Anthony is a professor of German and is married to a Jewish woman. John was in the army and when he left he set up a business: a language school. I think he can speak almost any language, he’s got a real gift. One of his uncles got married to a Russian exile and she taught him Russian, and he speaks Spanish because he was in the International Brigades during the Spanish war, and he learned some Hungarian while he was out there, as well as speaking quite good German. John isn’t married, but I think he’s been engaged for a while.”
When Amelia got home Albert was not there. She waited for him impatiently. She needed him, she needed his approval more than anything. She depended on him more than she would have cared to admit, and even though she knew that their relationship had no future, she said to herself that she would be with him for as long as she could.
Albert came back later than usual, but in a better mood than the day before.
“I’ve managed it, I’ve got an interview with the Prime Minister tomorrow, I have to get it all prepared now. They’re going to publish it in newspapers in the
“Well, I suppose the really hard work will start tomorrow. I met the group I’ll be working with, they seem pleasant.”
“I will never forgive Uncle Paul for convincing you to work for him. This decision will change the rest of your life.”
“I know, but I couldn’t just stand by with my arms folded after what we saw in Germany.”
“It is not your war, Amelia.”
“No, it is not my war. I’m afraid it will be everyone’s war.”
Over the next three months, Major Murray trained Amelia to turn her into an agent. She had exhaustive classes in German and Russian, she learned how to make explosives, to decipher codes and use weapons. She started work along with the rest of the group at seven in the morning, and they did not get home until evening.
Albert was worried because he thought Amelia was exhausted, but he knew that nothing he could say to her would make her change her mind. Amelia had convinced herself that if Hitler were defeated then England would help Spain get rid of Franco.
Over those months, Amelia was regularly in touch with her family in Madrid. She sent money to her Uncle Armando to support her sister Antonietta.
Amelia still lived with Albert, but she paid her half of the bills, and this made her feel independent and almost happy.
In the meantime, after unexpected and heroic resistance by the Finnish soldiers, the Red Army finally got hold of Finland, which resulted in the Soviet Union being expelled from the League of Nations.
And even though England and France had officially been at war with Germany since the invasion of Poland, it was not until 1940 that the hostilities began in earnest.
“Right, I think you should speak to Major Hurley now,” Lady Victoria said. “I still have some things to tell you, but the major can tell you about Amelia’s work in the Intelligence Service in more detail than I can. Oh yes, I nearly forgot! I said that Amelia stayed in contact with her family, and I think that she visited them in February 1940. I’m not sure of it, but I found a letter of Albert’s to his parents, where he says that Amelia is in Madrid.”
I took my leave of Lady Victoria after extracting from her a promise that she would invite me to her house again to carry on our exploration of Amelia Garayoa’s life.
I was stunned by what I had been told, so stunned that I nearly missed the e-mail that Pepe had sent me. He said that, given that I showed no signs of life and didn’t reply to his e-mails, the director of the newspaper had decided to dispense with my services. In other words, I’d been fired. It really didn’t matter to me, but I was annoyed about the scolding I’d be bound to get from my mother when she found out.
In spite of my insistence on seeing him as soon as possible, Major Hurley could only give me an appointment in a week’s time.
I called my mother, and just as I had feared, she treated me like a wayward child. She was already aware that I had been fired because Pepe, since I hadn’t replied to any of his e-mails, had called her to find out if I was still alive.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you are sorely mistaken. Who cares about this woman’s life?” she said.
“This woman was your grandmother, so you might have some interest in her life, I suppose,” I said.
“What are you saying? Do you think I have even the slightest interest in what this Amelia did? She’s not my grandmother!”
“What do you mean, she’s not your grandmother? That’s all I need to hear!”
“That woman abandoned her son, my father, and disappeared. We never heard anything else about her, and I couldn’t care less why she did it. Will it change my life to find out why?”
“I’ll tell you, your grandmother’s life was pretty intense.”
“Well, I’m happy for her, I hope that you have a good time with her.”
“Come on, Mom, don’t get upset!”
“Why shouldn’t I get upset? Should I be happy that I’ve got an airhead kid who instead of taking himself seriously fannies around investigating some irrelevant piece of family history?”
“Look, I must insist that Amelia’s story is not at all irrelevant. And it should matter to you, because she is your grandmother, whatever you say.”
“Don’t say another word about that woman! Look, either leave off your investigation or don’t call me again if you get into trouble. You’re old enough to look after yourself, and if you don’t then it’s because you don’t want to, so consider yourself warned. From here on in, the only thing I’ll do for you is give you a plate of food when you come to visit, but don’t ask for any more loans to pay the mortgage on your apartment, I won’t give you a penny.”
My mother might have been right from her perspective, but from mine I had no option but to carry on. It wasn’t just that I had promised Doña Laura and Doña Melita, but the investigation itself was like a poison that I was incapable of resisting.
7
I called Pablo Soler from my hotel to ask him to tell me, if he remembered, about Amelia’s visit to Madrid in February 1940. Don Pablo didn’t need to be asked twice and said I should come to Barcelona so that we could talk more calmly.
“Do you want me to tell you what I’ve found out?” I asked when I was sitting in front of him in his office.
“You shouldn’t tell me. There are things that the ladies may not want to be known outside the family.”
“Well, as far as I’ve been able to find out, you are practically family yourself!”
“No, don’t you make any mistake about that, young man. I will be eternally grateful for what they did for me, but I have no right at all to know more than what they want me to know. You keep on putting the puzzle together, and when it is fully finished, then you can hand it over to them.”
Don Pablo, who clearly had an exceptional memory, then told me about Amelia’s visit. A visit that could without doubt be classified as “dramatic”...
Antonietta’s tuberculosis worsened, and Don Armando and Doña Elena feared for her life, they had to take her to the hospital, and Don Armando asked Amelia to come to Madrid straight away.
Amelia had lost weight, but she seemed calmer, more sure of herself. As soon as she arrived she insisted that she wanted to go straight to the hospital, and her cousins Laura and Jesús went with her. I went as well, in fact wherever Jesús went, I went too.
Doña Elena and Edurne were looking after Antonietta, taking turns, and Don Armando and Laura came to the hospital as soon as they left work. Jesús was not allowed to go very often because he had suffered from tuberculosis as well, and Doña Elena was worried that he might have a relapse.
Amelia hugged her sister, rocking her as if she were a baby. Antonietta cried with the emotions she felt, she loved her sister very much and suffered when she was not there, although she never complained.
“How good it is that you’ve come! Now I will get better!”
“Of course you’ll get better, or else I’ll be extremely cross with you!”
“Don’t say that, I love you so much!” Antonietta protested.
Amelia spoke to the doctor who was looking after her sister and told him to cure her.
“Whatever it takes, do what needs to be done, but if anything happens to my sister then I... I don’t know what I’ll do!”
“But how dare you threaten me,” the doctor replied, obviously annoyed.
“I’m not threatening you, heaven forbid I should do such a thing, but... Antonietta is all that I’ve got left. I’ve lost my family, am I going to lose my sister as well?”
“No one is going to lose anyone, we do whatever we can to save lives, but I have to say that your sister is very weak and is responding badly to treatment.”
“Tell me what I can do and I will do it, never you worry.”
“We can’t do more than we are doing, and your sister’s life is not in our hands but in God’s. If He decides to call her, then there’s not
“I’m sorry?”
“Your sister’s life, like all of our lives, depends on God.”
“Well, that’s not how I see it. Do you really think that God needs my sister’s life? Why?”
“Please, Amelia, don’t annoy the doctor!” Doña Elena begged, upset by the turn the conversation was taking.
“Aunt, I am not annoying anyone, I just want Antonietta to get the treatment she needs to get over her illness, and I cannot bear this resignation that says that people die because God wants them to.”
“But the doctor is right, it is Our Lord who decides the hour of our death.”
“No. I don’t think that it was Our Lord who decided that my father should be shot, or that my mother... You know that she was ill when she died, without the strength to deal with her illness, because she was hungry and suffering, and poor. My father was killed by Fascist bullets, not by God.”
“I will not have you talking about politics! We have suffered enough because of politics. Do you want me to remember all the people who have died? Do you know why I haven’t gone mad? I’ll tell you, it’s because I believe in God and I accept that he has reasons which I do not understand.”
“Well, I’m not going to resign myself to Antonietta dying. We’ll move her to a different hospital, we’ll look for other doctors who look after her and who don’t wash their hands of the whole thing saying that they have nothing to do with my sister’s life and that it’s all up to God. Let’s not get God involved in all this.”
Doña Elena was scandalized by what Amelia had said. She looked at her as if she did not recognize her; maybe Amelia truly was a different person now. Even though she was physically fragile, she seemed a different person.
That night Amelia stayed to look after Antonietta, and Doña Elena and Edurne came back home with us. Doña Elena complained to Don Armando about their niece’s behavior.