Southern Seas (6 page)

Stuart Pedrell had lived in a house on the Puxtet, one of the hills which used to overlook Barcelona, in the same way that the Roman hills used to dominate Rome. Now it is carpeted with flats for the middle bourgeoisie, interspersed with the occasional penthouse occupied by an upper bourgeoisie that has some sort of relation to the older inhabitants of Puxtet’s surviving mansions. It had become the custom among the owners of the surviving mansions to provide their offspring with a duplex apartment close to home, a pattern repeated on the fringes of Pedralbes and Sarriá, the last bastion of an upper bourgeoisie clinging to its dignified towers. They too preferred to have their little ones close to hand.

Stuart Pedrell had inherited the turn-of-the-century house from a childless great aunt. It was the work of an architect influenced by the ironwork styles current in Britain at the time. Even the gates were a statement of principle, and an ornamental iron crest like the mane of some glazed dragon ran along the ridge of the tiled roof. Neo-Gothic windows; an ivy-covered façade; whitewood furniture with blue upholstery in a trim and disciplined garden. The elegance of a tall hedge of cypress framed the controlled freedom of a cluster of pine trees and the precise geometry of a little maze made of rhododendrons. Underfoot, turf and gravel. A polite sort of gravel, that crunched discreetly under your feet. Turf that must have been nearly a hundred years old: well-fed,
brushed and trimmed, a green, springy velvet on which the house seemed to float, as on a magic carpet. Black and white table trimmings, in silk and pique. A gardener dressed in the clothes of a Catalan peasant; a butler with symmetrical sideburns and a striped waistcoat. Carvalho noted that the chauffeur who got into the Alfa Romeo to collect Señora Stuart Pedrell was not wearing gaiters. But he appreciated the stylish grey uniform with velvet lapels and the hands dressed in a pair of fine, whitish-grey leather gloves that contrasted elegantly with the black steering wheel.

Carvalho had asked if he might move freely around the house, and the butler ushered him in with a movement of the head that hinted at an invitation to dance. And Carvalho, taking his cue, glided his way through the house with the Emperor Waltz humming in his head. He mounted a garnet-marble staircase, with a wrought-iron handrail on one side and a banister on the other. The stairs were bathed in the refracted light of a stained-glass window depicting St George and the Dragon.

‘Is the gentleman looking for anything in particular?’

‘Señor Stuart Pedrell’s rooms.’

‘If the gentleman would be so kind as to follow me …’

He followed the butler up the staircase onto a kind of open balcony. A perfect film setting. The heroine leans over and sees her favourite guest arriving; she calls out: ‘Richard!’; a flurry of long, blonde curls; she lifts her long skirts and hurries trippingly down the stairs into a long embrace. The butler, however, seemed oblivious to the cinematic potential of the scene. He asked Carvalho to follow him down a carpeted corridor, at the end of which he pushed open a high door of carved teak.

‘Some door!’

‘Señor Stuart Pedrell’s great uncle had it made. He had copra holdings in Indonesia,’ the butler explained, for all the world like a museum guide.

Carvalho entered the library. The desk had the imperious presence of a royal throne. He imagined some sixteenth-century cleric
poised over it, writing with a quill pen. The bedroom lay through a door on the right, but Carvalho took a long, slow look around the library, noting the dimensions of the room, the patterned stucco of the ceiling, the solid wooden wall-panelling which provided a backdrop for hefty bookcases full of leather-bound volumes, and several eighteenth- or nineteenth-century paintings by disciples of Bayeu or Goya, and a historical-romantic work by Martí Alsina. It was inconceivable that anybody could actually work there, except perhaps on the compiling of an Aramaic-Persian comparative dictionary.

‘Did Señor Stuart Pedrell use this study often?’

‘Almost never. In winter, he would sometimes light the fire and sit and read by firelight. The reason he kept the room like this was because of the value of what is in it. The library contains only books that are old and precious. The most recent is from 1912.’

‘You’re very well informed.’

‘Thank you. The gentleman is very kind.’

‘Do you have any other functions in the house, apart from being the butler?’

‘That’s the least of my responsibilities. In fact, I am responsible for the general upkeep of the house, and I also do the household accounts.’

‘Are you an accountant?’

‘No. By training, I am a teacher of commerce. In the evenings, I study philosophy and literature. Medieval history.’

Carvalho caught the look of pride in the butler’s eyes, the obvious delight that he felt at having caused confusion in the detective’s brain.

‘I was already living in the house when the Stuart Pedrells arrived as a young married couple. My parents had been in the service of the Misses Stuart for forty years.’

The bedroom had nothing of particular note in it, other than a first-rate reproduction of Gauguin’s painting
What Are We? Where Are We Going? Where Do We Come From?

‘This is a new painting.’

‘That is correct.’

There was a noticeable lack of enthusiasm in the butler’s voice.

‘Señor Stuart Pedrell had it hung over the head of his bed when he decided to come and live alone in this wing of the house.’

‘When was that?’

‘Three years ago.’

The butler turned a blind eye as Carvalho rifled through every drawer in the room, pushed back the bed so as to look behind it, and examined every item of clothing in the wardrobe.

‘Did you have a particularly close relationship with Señor Stuart Pedrell?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘Did you ever discuss personal things, apart from the daily routine of work?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘The usual.’

‘What do you mean by “usual”?’

‘Politics. Or a film, perhaps.’

‘How did he vote in the June 1977 elections?

‘He didn’t tell me.’

‘UCD?’

‘I don’t think so. Something more radical, I would imagine.’

‘And you?’

‘I don’t see why that should be of any interest to you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I voted for the Republican Left of Catalonia, if you really want to know.’

They left Stuart Pedrell’s crypt, and through the real world of the house there wafted the distant chords of a well-tuned piano. Hands that moved with discipline, but not much feeling.

‘Who’s playing?’

‘Señorita Yes,’ the butler replied, struggling to keep up as Carvalho strode rapidly towards the source of the music.

‘Yes? What, like in the English?’

‘It’s Yésica.’

‘Ah, Jésica.’

Carvalho opened the door. A red belt accentuated the narrowness of the girl’s waist. Jean-clad buttocks rested their tense and rounded youth on the piano stool. Her back was arched with a studied delicacy. A blonde ponytail hung from a head thrown back as if to accompany the notes on their journey through the house. The butler cleared his throat. Without turning round or interrupting her playing, the girl asked:

‘What is it, Joanet?’

‘Excuse me, Señorita Yes, but this gentleman would like to have a word with you.’

She swung round on the stool. She had grey eyes, a skier’s complexion, a large soft mouth, cheeks that were a picture of health, and the arms of a fully-formed woman. Her eyebrows were perhaps a little too thick, but they underlined the basic features of a girl who would not have looked out of place in an American TV commercial. Carvalho felt himself also coming under scrutiny, but it was a general scrutiny, rather than the detailed examination to which he had subjected her. Get a Gary Cooper in your life, girl, thought Carvalho, as he shook the hand that she offered with a seeming reluctance.

‘Pepe Carvalho. I’m a private investigator.’

‘Oh. I suppose it’s about Daddy. Can’t you people let him rest in peace?’

The glamour-girl façade crumbled. Her voice quivered, and her eyes flashed at him, full of tears.

‘It was Mummy and that dreadful Viladecans who started all this.’

The sound of the door closing suggested that the butler had heard as much as he wanted to hear.

‘Dead people don’t need to rest, because they don’t get tired.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Do you know otherwise?’

‘My father is alive—here in this house. I can feel him around me. I talk to him. Come here. Look what I found.’

She took Carvalho’s hand and led him to a lectern in a corner of the room. A large photo album was lying open on it. The girl slowly turned the pages, one after another, as if they were fragile between her fingers. She placed a grey-framed photograph in front of Carvalho. It showed Stuart Pedrell as a dark-skinned young man in shirt-sleeves, flexing Mr Universe muscles.

‘He’s handsome, isn’t he.’

The room smelt of marijuana, and so did she. With her eyes closed, she smiled ecstatically at the vision in her mind’s eye.

‘Did you have a close relationship with your father?’

‘Not before he died. When he left home, I’d been studying in England for about two years. We used to see each other in the summer, but not for long. I only got to know my father after he’d died. It was a beautiful escape. The South Seas.’

‘He never reached the South Seas.’

‘How would you know? Where are the South Seas?’

There was a will to fight in her wild eyes, her pursed lips and her whole body that seemed turned in on itself.

‘OK, let’s agree that he went to the South Seas. Did he ever try to get in touch with you or any of your brothers?’

‘Not with me. I don’t know about the others, but I don’t think so. Nene has been in Bali for months. The twins were almost strangers to him, and the little one is only eight.’

‘But the Jesuits are throwing him out.’

‘So much the worse for them. It’s crazy to send a kid to the Jesuits in this day and age. Tito is too imaginative for that kind of education.’

‘When your father appears to you, does he say where he was, all that time?’

‘There’s no need. I know where he was. In the South Seas. In a wonderful place where he could make a fresh start. The same young man who went to make his fortune in Uruguay.’

The girl’s account was a bit wide of the mark, but Carvalho had a soft spot for emotional myths.

‘Jésica …’

‘Jésica … No one ever calls me that. Nearly everybody calls me Yes. Some say Yésica, but no one says Jésica. It sounds nice. Look. My father, skiing in Saint-Moritz. Here he’s giving someone a prize. You know, he looks like you.’

Carvalho had tired of the sentimental journey through the album. He waved aside the possibility of any resemblance, and half sank back into a black leather sofa. This position of forced relaxation allowed him to contemplate the girl as she bent over the album. Her jeans were unable to conceal the strong, upright legs of a sportswoman, just as her short-sleeved woollen jumper failed to hide two firm breasts with immature nipples. Her neck served as a long, flexible column for the continual leftward and right-ward movement of her head. The ponytail trickled down slowly like honey from some wonderful pot. Sensing that Carvalho was looking at her, she took the swinging ponytail in one hand and turned to face him. He met her gaze. They stared into each other’s eyes until suddenly she ran towards the sofa and sat on Carvalho’s knee. She put her arms around him and buried her blonde head in his chest. The detective reacted without haste. He allowed the girl to let herself go, and slipped in an embrace that went a little beyond calming a young girl’s secret terrors.

‘Let him sleep. He’s gone to sleep. He went looking for purification, and now he’s asleep. The only reason they keep chasing him is because they’re jealous.’

The Ophelia type, thought Carvalho, and he was unsure whether to shake her or sympathize with her. In the end, he gently stroked her head, suppressing an urge to embark on an artful exploration of her neck. Irritated by his own indecision, he
moved her away with a gesture that was sudden but controlled.

‘When you get the marijuana out of your system, I’d like to come back and talk with you.’

She smiled, with her eyes closed. Her hands were loosely clenched between her legs.

‘I’m fine now. If only you could see what I see!’

Carvalho went towards the door, and turned to say goodbye. She sat there, still in ecstasy. Once before in his life he had slept with a girl like that—twenty years previously in San Francisco. She was a paediatrician whom he had been trailing in connection with Soviet infiltration of the early American counter-cultural movements. There was something missing from Señorita Stuart, though: the kind of imperial presence which only a North American body could express. Instead, she had that measure of frailty which, however small, clings to every southerner in the world, whatever their social class. Without thinking, he jotted down his name, address and phone number on a piece of paper, and walked back to hand it to the girl.