Lizard Tails

David’s alcoholic father, who is being pursued for political reasons, has deserted David and his attractive red-haired mother. David inhabits a fantasy world, fuelled by the films he sees at his local cinema and by images of war – Spitfires crashing into the sea, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima – and by the image of an RAF pilot whose photograph is pinned on his bedroom wall. David and his friend spend their time collecting detachable lizards’ tail; symbolic of the detachment and uncertainty which characterises their young lives in troubled post-war Spain.