Southern Seas Read online

  ‘It’s excellent.’

  ‘The green vegetables—artichokes, peas and so on—give off their own moisture, so you don’t need so much oil. The only dietetic heresy is the glass of cognac I added. But the doctors can get stuffed.’

  ‘Yeah, stuff the doctors.’

  Carvalho did not press his business. He hoped that Artimbau would return to the subject of Stuart Pedrell. The painter chewed slowly, and advised Carvalho to do the same. That way, you digest your food better, you eat less, and you lose weight.

  ‘It’s always tricky talking about a client.’

  ‘He’s a dead client.’

  ‘The wife still buys some of my work. And she pays better than her husband used to.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘That’s even trickier. She’s a living client.’

  The bottle was already finished, and the painter opened another. In no time at all, this too was half empty. Their thirst was well served by large glasses designed for mineral water.

  ‘The wife is quite a woman.’

  ‘So I’ve seen.’

  ‘I offered to paint her in the nude, but she wouldn’t have it. She’s certainly got class. More than him, I’d say. Both of them were made of money. Both had an impressive education, and their different connections gave them a very varied life. I was his court painter, I suppose. One day they could be sitting where you are now, eating one of my concoctions with me and my wife. And the next day, they might have López Bravo or López Rodo round to dinner—or some minister from the Opus Dei. You see what I mean? That should give you an idea. One day they’d be skiing with the king, and the next they’d be smoking joints with left-wing poets at Lliteras.’

  ‘Did you paint the mural in the end?’

  ‘Ah, you’ve heard about that. No. We were still discussing terms when he disappeared. We never agreed anything concrete. He wanted me to paint something very primitive. The faux-naif style of Gauguin’s Canaques period, but transposed to the native life of Lliteras. I did a few sketches, but he didn’t like them. I was still into realism, and maybe something a bit too militant slipped in. The peasantry and suchlike … To be honest, I wasn’t really all that interested in the idea. Between you and me, he was a bit of a loudmouth.’

  By now, the two of them had disposed of the second bottle.

  ‘A loudmouth?’

  ‘Yes. A loudmouth,’ Artimbau repeated, as he went in search of a third bottle.

  ‘Well, maybe I went a bit far, writing him off as a loudmouth. Like anyone else, he both was and wasn’t what he was.’

  Artimbau’s eyes, half buried in a forest of hair, gleamed with satisfaction. Carvalho provided the perfect audience, as if he were a blank canvas on which the artist could paint his image of Stuart Pedrell.

  ‘Like any rich man with angst, Stuart Pedrell was pretty careful. Every year he would get dozens of proposals asking him to help finance cultural ventures of one sort or another. Someone even suggested the idea of a university. Or maybe he was the one who suggested it … I can’t remember. There were publishing houses, magazines, libraries, foundations, all kinds of projects … You can imagine what it was like, as soon as people smelt that there was money around attached to cultural angst. After all, there’s not a lot of money round here, and not much cultural angst among the rich either. That’s why Stuart Pedrell always took a long time before coming to a decision. But he was also a bit of a dabbler. He would get interested in all sorts of projects and give them money—then he’d suddenly come down to earth and leave them in the lurch.’

  ‘How was he thought of among the artists and intellectuals?’

  ‘They all thought he was pretty weird, really. Artists and intellectuals didn’t value him too highly—because they don’t value anyone highly. If that ever changes, it’ll mean that our egos have collapsed and we’re no longer artists and intellectuals.’

  ‘The same thing happens with butchers.’

  ‘Yes, if they own their own shops. But not if they’re just employees.’

  Carvalho attributed Artimbau’s social-Freudian demagogy to the third bottle of wine.

  ‘Rich people had respect for him, because in this country they respect anyone who’s made a lot of money without too much effort. And Stuart Pedrell has certainly done that. He once told me the story of how he got rich, and it was enough to make you wet yourself laughing.

  ‘It was in the early 1950s, when there was that sudden block on imports. Raw materials were coming here only in a trickle, or via the black market. By then, Stuart Pedrell had finished studying to be a commercial lawyer. His father had already marked him down to take over the business, because his brothers had struck out on their own. He was still unsure of himself. He investigated the raw materials market and found out that there was a shortage of casein in Spain. Fine. So, where was casein to be got? In Uruguay and Argentina. Who wanted to buy it? He drew up a list of potential customers and visited them one by one. They were willing to buy from him if the ministry gave import permission. Easy as pie. Stuart Pedrell mobilized his contacts, who included government ministers, and they opened doors at the Ministry of Trade. The trade minister himself thought the whole project was very patriotic, because that was how Stuart Pedrell presented it to him. What would Spain do without casein? What would become of us without casein?’

  ‘I hate to think.’

  ‘Stuart Pedrell flew to Uruguay and Argentina. He talked with manufacturers. He went to meetings. He danced the tango. He even got into the habit of telling jokes with an Argentinian accent. He used to do that when he was on a high, or feeling down, or when he was playing the piano.’

  ‘In other words, all the time.’

  ‘No, no, I exaggerate. He got the casein at a reasonable price, a third or a quarter of the price that had been agreed in Spain. Everything went according to plan, and he used his first millions to make more. That’s not the best way to put it, of course, because he was clever enough to associate himself with businessmen who could make up for his personal aloofness. You could say that he was a Brechtian entrepreneur—the kind with the best prospects for the here and now. An alienated capitalist won’t have much chance in the social-democratic future that faces us.’

  ‘Who were his partners?’

  ‘There were two main ones: Planas and the Marquess of Munt.’

  ‘Sounds like big money.’

  ‘Big money and very good connections. For some time it was said that the mayor was also in on the act. Not just the mayor, but various banks and religious and semi-religious sects as well. Stuart Pedrell would put up the money and then take a back seat. In a way, I suppose, he was schizophrenic. The world of business was one thing, and his intellectual circles quite another. When he’d made enough money to assure the future of four generations, he went back to university and studied philosophy and politics in Madrid. Later on, he enrolled at Harvard and the London School of Economics. I know for sure that he wrote poems which he never published.’

  ‘Did he ever publish anything?’

  ‘Never. He used to say that he was too much of a perfectionist. But I think it was because he couldn’t find a style. That happens to a lot of people. They have everything that they think they need in order to create, and then they find that they haven’t got a style. So they bring literature into their lives, or painting into their wardrobes. Some rich people decide to buy up magazines or publishing houses instead. Stuart Pedrell was involved in financing a couple of small publishers, but he never gave them a lot—just enough to cover their annual losses. The money was a pittance for him.’

  ‘What about his wife? Why is she called Mima?’

  ‘From Miriam. It’s quite normal. All my clients are called Popo, Puli, Peni, Chocho, Fifi or somesuch. These days it’s chic to be “tired”, and nothing tires you more than having to say someone’s full name. But Mima was rather different. She seemed to be just an appendage of Stuart Pedrell at first, the typically cultured and affected wife of a rich a
nd cultured man. She never dropped her social airs, even when she was sitting here. But she never gabbled. She’s been a different woman since her husband disappeared. She’s brought so much energy into the business that the partners are even getting a bit concerned. Stuart Pedrell was easier to work with.’

  ‘And Viladecans?’

  ‘I only see him when he has to pay me. He’s the typical smart-arsed lawyer who helps the boss keep his hands clean.’

  ‘Girlfriends?’

  ‘That’s a very delicate area. What are you interested in? Past, present, or more wine?’

  ‘Wine and the present.’

  Artimbau brought another bottle.

  ‘It’s my last one of this vintage.’ He spilt a little as he filled Carvalho’s glass. ‘The most recent one is called Adela Vilardell. She was more or less permanent. But there were also plenty of short-term relationships—younger than most people would think acceptable. Stuart Pedrell had passed the fifty mark, and he favoured the classical style of erotic vampirism. I can set you on the trail of Adela Vilardell, but not of the one-nighters.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Yes and no. A painter can get to know these types quite well, especially if they’re clients. They bare their souls … and their pockets. It’s a revealing dual operation.’

  ‘The South Seas?’

  ‘His obsession. I think he’d been reading a poem about Gauguin, and he started to pursue the myth. He even bought a copy of the George Sanders film—The Moon and Sixpence I think it’s called—and screened it at home.’

  Carvalho handed him the sheet of verse that he had found among Stuart Pedrell’s papers. He translated the line from The Waste Land.

  ‘Do you know where these lines in Italian could come from? Can you see any hidden meaning? Maybe something Stuart Pedrell said to you?’

  ‘I often heard him say: “I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.” It was his pet phrase. The Italian doesn’t remind me of anything special, though.’

  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.