Free A Kiss for the Enemy by David Fraser Page A

our grandmother. Anna’s grandfather and our grandfather were brothers. Anna’s grandfather married an English lady. Both Anna’s own parents are dead.’
    â€˜Is her husband’s airforce station near here, then?’
    â€˜No, she is living with his parents. He is away. He is in Spain.’ Frido’s voice was surprisingly cold.
    Anthony digested this. From the start, the civil war which had broken out in 1936 in Spain had aroused strong emotionsin Britain. It was peculiar to hear, in so matter of tact a way, of a German officer serving there, presumably flying. A good many of his acquaintances at Oxford believed with furious indignation that the Spanish Republic was victim of an appalling conspiracy of evil; that democracy and decency were ranged against brutality and oppression; that right was self-evidently on one side. There had been countless demonstrations and fund raising occasions. Trains packed with volunteers had steamed out of Glasgow amid cheering crowds and a good deal of confusion.
    â€˜Communist organized, all this, of course,’ John Marvell had observed. ‘Wonderful chance for them to show themselves on the side of the angels.’
    On the other side of the coin he recalled a lunch in a friend’s rooms at Magdalen. A fellow guest, aged about thirty, was introduced to him as a Norwegian: a stolid, dependable-seeming man, a little dour. Anthony learned that the Norwegian worked in a family timber business, with an office in Spain.
    â€˜But no longer, unfortunately. We had to get out.’
    â€˜And whose side are you for?’ asked Anthony.
    â€˜Me?’ said the Norwegian, looking astonished at the question, ‘Why, for Franco – and civilization. It had broken down completely. There was anarchy. Butchery. He, or somebody, had to come.’
    And whatever the rights and wrongs of it, a good many people took small interest in what they regarded as the incomprehensible quarrels of a bunch of Dagoes. Anthony’s mind went back to drunken shouts in The Broad at Oxford, to Freddie Barnett’s high-pitched yells, to Frido’s grave face.
    Now Frido was talking again.
    â€˜Langenbach is quite well known as a brilliant flying man, I believe. He’s a lot older than my cousin, Anna. He is clever, too. Now he is away, she lives with his parents. I would like you to meet them. They are nice people. Rather strict but nice.’
    â€˜Is it on our way?’
    â€˜No. It is eastward. I should have planned earlier perhaps.’
    He sounded regretful. Anthony was not sure whether Frido was tacitly suggesting an unannounced descent upon the Langenbachs. Nothing, in fact, was further from Frido’s mind.Such things were not for hasty improvisation. The Langenbachs, staid and formidable, were not of the kind to welcome ‘dropping in’ by a young trio, whether or not they claimed cousin-ship with their daughter-in-law Anna.
    â€˜When you come again we will arrange something,’ said Frido. ‘Next time. Next time will be soon, please. I would like you to see the house, it is rather famous, it is old, older than Arzfeld. And our cousin is charming.’
    â€˜Charming!’ said Lise, fervently.
    Eventually they decided to head south, toward home.
    â€˜It’s been a lovely day,’ said Anthony with sincerity. He turned his face full to Frido and smiled, in the way Frido recognized from their strolls through Oxford side by side, Anthony careless of whom he bumped. Frido found himself wishing that this habit was confined to pedestrian rather than motoring progression.
    â€˜How far to home, Frido?’ They had been wandering with little sense of time or distance.
    â€˜About sixty-five miles, maybe.’
    Anthony whistled. ‘That’s going to take a bit of time! As we know, the roads aren’t exactly fast.’ Soon it would be dark and he had discovered, rather surprisingly, that Frido’s skill at map reading