Margaret C. Williams

Margaret C. Williams, usually called Meg, is an American diplomatic employee whose political sympathies and sharp eye make her a consequential ally to Manolo Arroyo. Their friendship begins at a Christmas reception in Geneva, where she identifies a possible enemy of the Spanish Republic and quietly points him out to Manolo. From that first discreet exchange, her personal loyalties and professional usefulness develop together: she becomes a trusted friend and a partner in passing information without making their political connection public.

Identity and Introduction

Meg introduces herself as Margaret C. Williams, the new assistant in the Department of the Mediterranean. She explains that the C stands for Carpani, her mother’s family name, and that her Spanish carries a strong Mexican accent because she is from Texas and was raised by a Mexican nurse. Her introduction joins several strands of identity—Texas upbringing, an Italian maternal lineage, and Spanish learned in a Mexican household—rather than presenting her simply as an American voice in a European diplomatic setting.

She meets Manolo at the Washington delegation’s Christmas party in Geneva in December 1932, four months after General Sanjurjo’s failed coup. Manolo has come to identify possible enemies of the Republic and strengthen ties with the American staff, though he is already weary of the reception’s cocktails, champagne fountains, elegant women, costly jewelry, and powerful men. Leaning against a column, he turns when Meg says, “Es aquel.” Her Mexican-accented Spanish catches his attention; after she gives her name and background, his laughter signals an immediate ease between them.

Meg knows who Manolo is before he has introduced himself. With her drink she indicates a man in a gray suit speaking with a German officer, disguising the warning by clinking glasses with Manolo as if they were merely toasting. She also notes that the man arrived with a young woman who has since disappeared from view. The gesture establishes Meg’s observational skill and her awareness of the risks embedded in an apparently ordinary diplomatic gathering.

Background and Political Commitments

Meg is the daughter of Hank Williams, a Democratic congressman. To satisfy his constituents and keep the family home in Texas, he required his two children to remain in Dallas until university. Her older brother later moved to Washington to be near their parents; Meg stayed with her nurse for four more years before she was accepted at Barnard College and moved to New York. The account of her upbringing gives her a history of separation within a family shaped by political expectations and geography.

Her support for the Spanish Republic predates her meeting with Manolo. Meg’s sympathy had been formed by Celsa’s story: the injustice, sadness, and poverty in the young Spanish woman’s life seemed to her like signs of an inescapable destiny. Celsa had been born in a village in Orense, left with her grandmother while her parents emigrated, and did not see the sea until she was fourteen, when she travelled from Vigo with her mother’s sister. Meg’s political commitment thus emerges not only from diplomatic observation but also from attention to an individual life marked by migration and deprivation.

Meg had been deeply in love with Celsa, more so even than with her brother’s friend Perry, whom she had nearly married. She tells Manolo that her attractions vary between men and women, a fact Perry did not understand when she told him. Her frankness gives her a voice of her own in the relationship: she describes her desire directly, rather than allowing it to be reduced to a passing implication in someone else’s account.

Friendship and Professional Collaboration

Meg and Manolo discover a shared childhood absence: both had missed their fathers and mothers while growing up. Manolo tells her about his childhood in a village in León, with cold damp, mist, and slate roofs—details that recall the village landscape Meg associates with Celsa’s upbringing in Orense. The parallel does not make their histories identical. Manolo describes a different route, shaped by the Sierra Pambley Foundation, his school in Villablino, and the Azcárate family; those institutions and relationships brought warmth and light into an account that might otherwise have resembled Celsa’s story of hardship.

Hearing Manolo’s history deepens Meg’s existing Republican sympathies into fervent commitment. Their exchange of personal histories becomes the basis of a happy, close professional partnership, but their friendship is closer still. The novel presents the two bonds together: political work creates a reason to rely on one another, while their candid conversations give that work a human intimacy beyond shared political purpose.

Two days after they meet, they encounter each other again at a reception hosted by the French delegation. Meg complains that Geneva is not very entertaining; Manolo agrees, then offers to show her some of its less obvious corners. The invitation shifts their acquaintance away from official hospitality and toward a more private knowledge of the city.

Discretion and Exchange

Because it would be dangerous or unhelpful for Meg to be publicly identified as a supporter of the Republic, she and Manolo manage their appearances carefully. They do not enter receptions together or leave the rooms at the same time. Instead, they arrange to meet for a final drink in one of the few late-night bars not frequented by the diplomatic corps. Their separation in public is not distance between them but a practical condition of their cooperation.

In those bars they drink like comrades, look at women, comment on their qualities and faults, and exchange information. The ease of the ritual provides cover for work that cannot safely be carried out in the open. Meg’s discreet toast at the first party anticipates this later pattern: a social gesture can carry a warning, and an apparently casual meeting can serve both friendship and intelligence-sharing.

Her character is defined by the combination of those capacities. She can move through diplomatic settings without mistaking their glitter for substance, recognize a politically significant stranger, and preserve the discretion required to act on what she knows. Yet the narrative gives equal weight to her private history and candor: her attachment to Celsa, the experience of missing her parents, and her direct account of her desires explain why political solidarity for her is bound to particular people and their lives.