Southern Seas Read online

  ‘Do you use it often?’

  ‘No. It’s very expensive. Do you want some? There’s still a little left.’

  ‘I’ve got my own drugs.’

  ‘Give me a drop of wine.’

  ‘It’ll be bad for you.’

  She shut her eyes and smiled, as if she were living a beautiful dream. She took Carvalho’s hands and pulled him up. She glued her body to his startled skin, and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, his chest, his head, and then his whole body, while her hands explored his back. Carvalho had to force up feelings of desire, and she responded with drugged obedience to his erotic advances. She lavished reflex kisses on his mouth, then moved her lips down the trail of his chest, abdomen and penis as Carvalho bent his head slightly back. She changed position at his merest gesture, all her resistance and passion overcome. Her skin and will became his instruments. They made love in two different orbits, and only when the ceiling came back into sight did she frantically grip Carvalho’s hand and murmur that she loved him, that she didn’t want to leave. Carvalho felt as if he owed her something. He was upset with himself.

  ‘Do you always take drugs whenever you go to bed with someone?’

  ‘I feel fine with you. You don’t scare me. It usually scares me, but I don’t feel scared with you.’

  Carvalho turned her over, put her on all fours and made ready to sodomize her. Not a sound of protest came from the submissive head hidden by its soft hair. Linking his arms around her slim waist, he felt the dark lust ebbing away from him.

  ‘Do it if you like. I don’t mind.’

  Carvalho jumped up and reached for the box of Condal Number Six. He lit a cigar, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching the spectacle of his slowly drooping penis. Adios, muchacho, compañero di mi vida …

  The girl’s silence made him turn. She was asleep. He covered her with the sheet and a blanket, then found his pyjamas and put them on. In the next room, he replayed the Mahler record, stoked the fire and sprawled on the sofa with his cigar in one hand and the wine within reach of the other. Bleda was sleeping beside the fire, the most contented animal in the world, and Yes was sleeping in a room shaped for the taciturn solitude of a man who burned away days and years as if they were bad habits to be got rid of. He jumped from the sofa, disturbing Bleda in her sleep. With eyes wide open and her ears straining, the dog seemed to be back in the uncertainty of the wilds as she watched Carvalho move towards the kitchen.

  His hands delved simultaneously into cupboards and drawers as he laid out ingredients on the marble top. He cut three aubergines into one-centimetre rounds, and sprinkled them with salt. Then he put oil in the frying pan and fried a clove of garlic until it was burnt almost black. He tossed some prawn heads in the same oil. He shelled the prawns and diced some pieces of ham. He removed some of the prawns’ heads and put them to boil in a pan. Having rinsed the salt from the aubergine slices, he dried them individually with a tea towel. Next he fried all the aubergines in the garlic-and-prawn oil, and left them to drain in a colander. Still in the same oil, he sautéed grated onion with a spoonful of flour, and added the bechamel and prawn-head stock. Having arranged the aubergines in layers in an oven-proof casserole, he strewed them with shelled prawns and diced ham, and bathed everything in the bechamel. He grated cheese all over the crisp whiteness of the bechamel, placed the casserole in the oven, and waited for the cheese to melt. He cleared everything from the kitchen table with a sweep of his elbows, laid two sets of cutlery on the white tablecloth, and brought a bottle of Jumilla claret from the cupboard outside the kitchen. When everything was ready, he returned to the bedroom.

  Yes was sleeping on her side, with her face to the wall. Carvalho shook her awake, helping her to stand up, and virtually carried her into the kitchen. He sat her down in front of a plate, and served. Aubergines au gratin, with prawns and ham.

  ‘I admit it’s not very orthodox. Normally it’s made with chemically pure bechamel and much less of a prawn flavour. I have rather a primitive palate.’

  Yes looked at the plate, and at Carvalho, and made no comment. She was not yet fully awake. She dipped her fork into the delicate crispness, put it in her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s very good. Is it out of a packet?

  Carvalho was in luck. Teresa Marsé was up early, and he found her busy at her cash register. The boutique had a smell of strawberries to it. A customer dressed like a peasant designed by Yves St Laurent picked up her change and left Carvalho and Teresa standing amid third-worldist designer garments made for those who shun the made-to-measure market.

  ‘You’re up early. It’s twelve o’clock.’

  ‘I got here a quarter of an hour ago.’

  ‘Did you know this guy?’

  Teresa took the photograph of Stuart Pedrell without taking her eyes off Carvalho.

  ‘I know you from somewhere, stranger, but I don’t know where. Two years ago, or maybe it was three, you came asking me about a corpse. How come you’re always asking me about corpses? You invite me to dinner, and then you start on about corpses. Is this another one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Looks like Stuart Pedrell. He was much better looking in real life.’

  ‘The reason I’m asking you is because he was part of your world.’

  ‘Maybe. But he had much more money than most of us. When I was married, I used to see quite a lot of the Stuart Pedrells. My husband was in the building racket too. Where are you taking me to eat today?’

  ‘I can’t today.’

  ‘I don’t work for nothing, and especially not for the likes of you.’

  She hung her arms around Carvalho’s neck and tickled the front of his palate with her tongue.

  ‘Teresa, I haven’t had breakfast yet …’

  The woman passed her hand through her red afro and drew away from him.

  ‘Come after breakfast next time.’

  She took him into the back room of the shop. Carvalho sat on a piano stool, while she enthroned herself in a wicker chair from the Philippines.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything you know about Señor Stuart Pedrell’s sex life.’

  ‘Obviously I come into your story-line as the cultured whore. At least you haven’t been slapping me about lately. You hit me that first time. And worse. As far as sex goes, Señor Stuart Pedrell was not on my books. When I knew him, I was the virtuous wife of an upright industrialist. We used to go to sessions for Catholic couples organized by Jordi Pujol. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘The politician?’

  ‘Yes. Once a week, young married couples from Barcelona high society would meet together with Jordi Pujol, to discuss morality and the Christian way of life. The Stuart Pedrells came along from time to time. They were older than us, about the same age as Jordi. But they listened, and joined in the discussions.’

  ‘Were the Stuart Pedrells very reactionary?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. But the sessions set the tone. We were young bourgeois, with a controlled degree of anxiety. Moderate anxieties. We used to talk about Marxism and the civil war too. Against them, of course. Against Marxism and against the civil war. I remember it well. On Tuesdays, we would meet at the Liceo. And on Wednesdays, at my house, or whoever’s turn it was, to talk about morality.’

  ‘Is that all you know about Stuart Pedrell?’

  ‘No. Once he chased me round the room, sitting on a chair. I was on a chair too.’

  ‘Don’t tell me—you were playing musical chairs!’

  ‘No. He would start moving his chair closer to me. And his hands. Then I’d move my chair away. And then it would start over again.’

  ‘Was this in front of Jordi Pujol?’

  ‘No. In another room.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘My husband arrived. He chose not to see what was going on. But that was the first and last time. Stuart Pedrell led a double life, or rather a multiple life. He didn’t just stick to chasing young married
women on chairs. I see you’re beginning to get interested.’

  ‘Are there any interesting stories?’

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. A string of married women. Problems with husbands incapable of expressing themselves. Stuart Pedrell had the advantage of knowing how to talk. The biggest scandal was probably the business with Cuca Muixons. But even that was nothing much: a few slaps in the face.’

  ‘The husband?’

  ‘No. Stuart Pedrell’s wife decided to start hitting Cuca Muixons at a polo match. Then everyone got more civilized about it, and went on their way. Particularly after Stuart Pedrell began an affair with Lita Vilardell. That was different, though. An intense passion, just like in a novel. Stuart suddenly arranged to meet her in a London park, and he turned up in a bowler hat, dressed as an English City gent. He took a lot of care over the way he dressed. Another time, he met her in Cape Town. I don’t know what he was dressed as, but I do know that he arrived on time.’

  ‘Didn’t they travel out together?’

  ‘No. That way, it was more romantic.’

  ‘Could she afford the trips?’

  ‘The Vilardells have as much money as the Stuart Pedrells, if not more. Lita got married very young to an ultra-rich merchant shipowner, and had two or three daughters by him. Then one day, her husband found her in bed with the Sabadell centre-forward. He took the daughters, and Lita took off for Cordoba with a flamenco guitarist. There was also a wild affair with a Marseilles gangster who marked her with a flick knife. When she gets drunk, she swears she’s even had it off with Giscard d’Estaing. But no one takes her seriously. She’s a pathological liar. The affair with Stuart Pedrell lasted for ages. It was a very stable relationship, almost as if Stuart had married for a second time. You men are disgusting: you always want to marry the women you sleep with. So that you can own them for life. Anyway, no point in my getting all worked up …’

  ‘What are people round here saying about his death?’

  ‘I’m a bit out of touch with that crowd, really. I hardly see them at all. Maybe a customer now and then. They say it was another case of womanizing. He’d started going off the deep end a bit. Age spares no man, particularly those who discover their flies at forty. My father’s generation was very different. In those days, they’d get married, and while they were doing up the family apartment, they’d set one up on the side for their wife’s hairdresser, or her manicurist. That’s what my father did for Paquita, my mother’s dressmaker. A really cute woman. Sometimes I go to see her in Pamplona. I managed to pull some strings and get her into an old people’s home. She’s had a bad stroke … As for Stuart Pedrell, he was a victim of Francoite puritanism, the same as Jordi Pujol.’

  ‘How was he getting on with Lita Vilardell before he disappeared?’

  ‘Normal enough. They’d have dinner together once a week, and both enrolled on a course about Tantra art. I know that, because we met there once.’

  ‘Has she observed a period of mourning?’

  ‘Who? Vilardell?’

  Teresa Marsé laughed so hard that the wicker chair groaned under her.

  ‘Sure. She probably set her coil at half-mast.’

  ‘The señorita is out at a music lesson, but she said that you should wait. She won’t be long.’

  The cleaning woman carried on hoovering the carpet. Carvalho walked to a balcony that looked out over Sarriá and beyond Vía Augusta, to the hazy landscape of a city drowning in a sea of carbon monoxide. Sub-tropical plants in glazed tile window boxes. A pair of beach chairs, with blue canvas and white-painted wooden frames. One was badly worn; the other was the exclusive domain of a dachshund bitch who lifted her head, to cast a wary glance at Carvalho, and then barked and jumped down, trailing her teats, and came over to sniff his trousers. She wrinkled her nose, unpleasantly surprised at the smell of another bitch. She started yapping at Carvalho. He tried to make friends, bringing to bear all his recently acquired authority as a dog owner. But the dog shot under its deck chair, from where it continued to express its radical incompatibility with the intruder.

  ‘She’s very spoilt,’ the cleaning woman shouted over the din of the vacuum cleaner. ‘But she doesn’t bite.’

  Carvalho stroked a banana palm that was obviously blighted by urban pollution—condemned to the fate of a botanical orangutan in the zoo of this classy penthouse suite. He leaned over the balcony and looked down the smart Sarriá thoroughfare, where a few towers still survived in their garden settings.

  ‘The señorita!’ called the herald, and at that moment Adela Vilardell appeared before Carvalho, clutching Béla Bártok’s Microcosms and a book of sheet music under one arm.

  ‘What a morning! I feel as if I’ve been in the wars.’

  Thirty-year-old grey-blue eyes were gazing at Carvalho—eyes inherited by every Vilardell since the founding of the dynasty. The first of the line had been a slave trader, at a time when most people no longer trafficked in slaves. He had returned to his home town with enough money to make himself a Count and pass the title on to his children. She had her grandfather’s grey-blue eyes, the body of a flat-chested Romanian gymnast, the face of the sensitive wife of a sensitive violinist, and hands that must have stroked his penis as if it were Mozart’s magic flute.

  ‘Do you like the view?’

  ‘I’m very demanding.’

  Without removing her coat, Adela Vilardell sat on the deck-chair and immediately had the grub-like hound on her lap. Carvalho tried not to look at her, so as to avoid yet another defensive conversation. He leaned again on the balcony rail, and looked sideways at the woman. She in turn was studying him, as if to calculate his weight and the effort that would be required to push him over the edge.

  ‘How are your studies going?’

  ‘Which studies?’

  ‘Music. Your cleaning woman tells me you’re taking music lessons.’

  ‘Yes. I started them again, just like that. When I was young, I got as far as the fourth grade, but then I dropped it. It was a torture that my mother inflicted on me. But now it’s sheer delight—the best hours of the week. I’m not the only one who goes. It’s at the Centre for Musical Studies, a new place that’s full of people like me.’

  ‘What does “people like you” mean?’

  ‘Adults who want to learn something they’ve never been able to do before, for lack of time, or money, or interest.’

  ‘With you, of course, it was lack of interest.’

  Adela Vilardell nodded and waited for the interrogation to continue.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Stuart Pedrell?’

  ‘I don’t remember the exact date. It was towards the end of 1977. He was preparing for his trip, and we talked briefly.’

  ‘You weren’t planning to go with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was it that he didn’t want, or you didn’t want?’

  ‘There was never any question of it. Our relationship had been cooling off for some time.’

  ‘For anything—or anyone—in particular?’

  ‘It was a question of time, really. Our relationship lasted nearly ten years, and there were periods of great intensity. We’d spent whole summer months together, when his family was away on holiday. By then, we were a long-established couple. We were very used to each other.’

  ‘Besides, Señor Stuart Pedrell was spending time on other women.’

  ‘Everyone that came along. I was the first to realize it. Or rather, the second, because I suppose his wife Mima was one step ahead of me. I didn’t care. The only thing that bothered me was the way he went round picking up infants.’

  ‘Infants?’

  ‘Up to the age of twenty, every man and every woman ought to be in infant school.’

  ‘Did you benefit financially from your relationship with Stuart Pedrell?’

  ‘No. He didn’t support me. It’s true that he paid for me sometimes. When we ate out together, for instance, he would pay the bill for both of us. Maybe that strikes yo
u as excessive.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever offer to pay?’

  ‘I am, or used to be, a young lady. And I was brought up on the principle that women don’t pay in restaurants.’

  ‘It would seem that you live on investment income. A lot of it.’

  ‘Yes. I have my great-grandfather to thank for that. He was a shepherd from Ampurdán who got together enough money to send my grandfather off to what remained of our American colonies.’

  ‘I know your family history. I read it a short while ago in the Correo Catalan. It was a bit toned down, though.’

  ‘Daddy had shares in the Correo.’

  ‘During the time that Stuart Pedrell was missing, did he ever make contact with you?’

  The grey-blue eyes opened wide, as if to reveal the absolute transparency of Adela Vilardell’s body and soul as she answered:

  ‘No.’

  The ‘no’ had faltered slightly as the air rose from her flat chest.

  ‘You see how it was. Years and years of a relationship, and then nothing.’

  She waited for Carvalho to make some observation. But when he remained silent, she added:

  ‘Absolutely nothing. Sometimes I thought: “What can this man be doing …? Why doesn’t he get in touch with me?” ’

  ‘Why did you think that? Didn’t you think he was in the South Seas?’

  ‘I was in that part of the world myself, once, and I know that they have postboxes! I’ve posted cards there myself.’

  ‘It didn’t take you long to find a replacement for Stuart Pedrell …’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’