Three and One Make Five

by Roderic Jeffries

  Alvarez parked alongside a pigsty in which several pigs were snorting and squealing. Come the winter, he thought as he climbed out of the car, and there would be a matanza with a pig slaughtered and the family and their friends preparing hams, sobrasada, butifarra, negro . . .

  To the right of the house, a couple were working in the nearest field. He was dressed in beret, shirt, torn trousers and plimsolls, and was weeding with a small hand hoe. She was dressed in a wide brimmed straw hat, a faded and shapeless cotton frock, and shoes made from canvas and strips of worn tyre, and was irrigating, using a mattock to open and close channels running between bush tomatoes.

  The man straightened up and stared at Alvarez, his leathery, lined, stubbled face showing no expression. The woman continued irrigating.

  ‘Señor Amengual?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’d like a word.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Enrique Alvarez, from Llueso.’

  Amengual hawked and spat. I’ve a cousin out there.’ He spoke as if Llueso were hundreds of kilometres away. ‘Name of Juan Sanchez.’

  ‘Does he run a butcher’s shop?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘He sells some good meat . . . I’ve come to talk about your wife’s brother who died three years back.’

  Amengual’s expression became sullen and he bent down and resumed work, chopping the heads off the weeds with a rhythm that he could maintain all day.

  ‘Cuerpo General de Policia.’

  The woman suddenly stopped work and stared at Alvarez and the water, rushing into the side channel from the main one which led back to an estanque, filled it and overflowed. Hastily she bent down once more and opened the entrance to the next channel, using the plug of earth to dam the previous one.

  Amengual stopped his weeding and walked between the rows of sweet peppers to a rough pathway. When close to Alvarez, he jerked his head in the direction of the house.

  Outside the house was a rough patio—a hard-packed dirt floor and concrete pillars, chipped and cracked, which supported wires on which were trained three grape vines whose dozens of bunches of grapes, now no larger than peas, hung down. Three wooden chairs and a table, all badly worm-eaten, were set out under the vines. Without a word, Amengual sat and stared out at the land.

  Tm sorry to have to bring up a sad subject,’ said Alvarez, ‘but I need to know certain facts about your wife’s brother, Augustin Llobera, who died three years ago . . . Why had he gone out to the cliffs at Setray? What was he doing there, so far from anywhere?’

  Amengual shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘You must have some idea why he was there?’

  Amengual spoke angrily. ‘He fell and died. Does it matter why he was there to fall?’

  ‘I need to know.’

  A small cur dog, with curled tail came round the corner of the house and approached them. He shouted and it hurriedly retreated.

  ‘He lived here with you, didn’t he?’

  ‘When he was here.’

  ‘Was he often away, then?’

  ‘He was daft,’ said Amengual with the detachment of a man who had always accepted life as it was and not yearned for what was not. ‘Sometimes he were here, sometimes he weren’t.’

  ‘Would he be away a long time?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Have you any idea where he used to go when he was away?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe he stayed with a friend?’

  ‘He didn’t have no friends.’

  ‘Had he been with you immediately before he died?’

  ‘Hadn’t seen him for more’n a couple of weeks.’

  ‘How did he manage to live when he wasn’t with you?’

  ‘Some folks’d give him scraps to eat. When he got too hungry, he’d come back.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about meeting foreigners?’

  ‘Why’d he want to talk about foreigners?’

  ‘During the war he got shot in the head—was that soon after it started?’

  ‘What’s it to you? He’s dead. Let the poor bastard rest in peace, seeing as he never had any when he was alive.’

  ‘Did he often talk about what happened to him during the war?’

  Amengual stood and went into the house. When he returned it was with an earthenware pitcher and two mugs. He filled the mugs with wine and passed one across. It was a strange gesture of companionship coming, as it did, immediately after his angry outburst.

  Alvarez drank. The wine was like it had been when he was young and it had all been locally made: harsh and leaving behind a taste of hot, dusty bitterness.

  ‘Which army was he in?’

  ‘He weren’t in the army.’

  ‘Then how’d he get shot?’

  Amengual’s expression tightened. He drained his mug, refilled it.

  Over forty years ago, Alvarez thought, and still the fear and the guilt remained for some of those who had lived through the civil war, even though there was now a socialist government, the communist party was official, and La Pasionaria had appeared on television. ‘Old man,’ he said softly, ‘no matter what happened then, it can’t threaten you now.’

  Amengual drank deeply, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Did he betray someone?’

  ‘No,’ he replied violently.

  ‘Then how did he get shot?’

  Amengual’s wife, having finished irrigating the tomatoes, came across to the patio. She sat next to her husband.

  ‘He’s asking about Augustin,’ Amengual said. ‘About him being shot.’

  She looked at Alvarez, but remained silent.

  Alvarez waited, with the infinite patience of a peasant.

  ‘Before it all started,’ Amengual said suddenly, ‘he was always talking.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Isn’t that right? Before we was married, didn’t I tell him, it’s trouble to talk like that? But he wouldn’t listen. Just kept on talking, didn’t matter if they was listening.’

  Alvarez pictured the times: the illiterate peasant denouncing the system under which the few lived lives of luxury and the many lived lives of poverty: the authorities who listened and waited: the men and women who were terrified by the words—knowing what reprisals they might bring—yet who were inexorably drawn to this vision of a future in which their lives might be granted some dignity . . .

  ‘The guards came looking for him,’ continued Amengual. ‘He was twelve days in the mountains.’

  ‘I took him food,’ his wife said, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Then he got clean away. The guards called the army, but they couldn’t do no better. He got away!’

  ‘They came to the house of my parents,’ she said. ‘They tried to make them talk, but they knew nothing so they could tell nothing. The guards left me because I was young, but it was me who knew where he was and was feeding him.’

  They became silent, far away with their memories.

  ‘He left the island?’ Alvarez asked.

  ‘He was a fisherman. So he took a boat and sailed to Barcelona and joined them.’

  Them? There’d been so many factions to begin with: communists, anarchists, socialists . . . ‘What did he do if he wasn’t in the army?’

  ‘The navy. Ain t I just said he was a fisherman?’

  ‘The navy!’ exclaimed Alvarez, seeing one more link with the five men who’d gone scuba-diving.

  They were frightened by his sharp reactions.

  He smiled as he held up his mug. ‘Any chance of a drop more wine? Haven’t had any so good since I was a kid and my parents made it.’

  He talked about wine and wine-making and, because it had become obvious that first and foremost he was a peasant like themselves and not a detective, they gradually lost their fright.

  ‘What ship was your brother on?’ he asked.

  ‘The Aosta,’ she answered immediately. ‘And he was on it when it came to Porto Cristo—not that any of us knew it . . .’

&nb
sp; She talked about the invasion force, led by the old battleship Jaime I, which had sailed from Ibiza after the government had retaken that island. They’d arrived off Porto Cristo and the troops had landed and begun to fight their way inland . . .

  ‘The Marques de Orlocas lived in the big house. He was head of the local Falange.’ Her voice was now very bitter. ‘The girls couldn’t get paid work except for going up to the big house: if they had looks, he was after them like a goat. And then if they got with child they were thrown out for sluts.’

  ‘The brave Marques de Orlocas!’ sneered Amengual. He refilled both mugs, then passed his to his wife. When she’d drunk as much as she wanted, he topped it up for himself. ‘So rich his lands stretched forever and his wife had more jewels than a field of wheat has ears. Ate their grub off gold. While the likes of us went hungry.’ He drank, laughed harshly. ‘When they told him the Red ships were off Porto Cristo and the soldiers were landing, his bowels turned to water. Some guards were sent to defend him, but he thought about the mothers of the women he’d raped and he reckoned an army wouldn’t be big enough to defend him . . . He’d a boat what he kept at Puerto Britax. Never used it much on account of always being seasick, but it was smart to have a boat. He reckoned that it’d take him, his wife, and two bitches of daughters, to somewhere safe. So the guards drove him to the Puerto with all his valuables.

  ‘When they reached the boat, he wouldn’t take the guards with him because he reckoned there wasn’t room with all his valuables. They said they’d be butchered if they was caught by the other side, but it was all the same to him what happened to them now. He sailed out of the bay and turned to Palma. Usually he had a bloke to do the engines and so he didn’t know much about ‘em . . .’

  ‘And they broke down,’ interrupted his wife eagerly and with deep gratitude. ‘And they drifted and the wind and tide took ‘em down the coast towards Porto Cristo.’

  Amengual nodded. ‘The Aosta was anchored offshore and beyond the other ships and because there was a moon someone saw the boat drifting by. It looked abandoned and the captain said as they ought to get hold of it to use for taking supplies ashore. Being a fisherman and knowing about small boats, Augustin was sent off in charge of one of the launches, along with three other seamen.

  ‘They didn’t see anyone was aboard until they was alongside. Then the Marques showed himself and started pleading and promising ‘em a fortune if they’d let him go. Never recognized Augustin. But Augustin recognized him, all right.

  ‘The Marques hadn’t no balls, but his wife and daughters was different. They’d a couple of guns and as soon as they were certain Augustin and them others were from the Red ships, they started shooting. Two of the seamen was killed and Augustin was hit in the head. He was still conscious, so he sailed the launch out of gunshot, turned it, and then put it at full speed and aimed it slap at the Marques’s boat. They went into it so hard they smashed it and turned it over. Pretty soon it sank, taking the Marques and two of the women with it. But one of the daughters scrambled aboard the launch, which was still floating even though it had been real smashed up . . . Augustin got ‘em back to the ship before he lost consciousness.’

  There was a silence. ‘And then?’ asked Alvarez.

  ‘The next day the Italian planes started bombing and the other side counter-attacked and the soldiers got pushed back. The ships did what they could, but a lot of soldiers was killed or taken prisoner. And there wasn’t much difference for the poor sods.’

  ‘What happened to Augustin?’

  ‘When his ship docked in Barcelona they put him in hospital. They did what they could for him, but he’d gone soft on account of the shot to the head.’

  ‘And what about the Marques’s daughter who’d survived the sinking of the boat?’

  Amengual hawked and spat. ‘She lived. And later her side won so she was back and she started living in the big house again.’

  ‘But not for long. With God’s help, it caught fire,’ said his wife, with simple but deep satisfaction.

  Amengual spoke with renewed bitterness. ‘But no one, not even God, could burn up the fields. So they’re still here . . .’ He stopped and looked at Alvarez, frightened that the consequences of an arson committed by a village all those years before could still harm him.’

  ‘The fields should have been salted,’ said Alvarez harshly.

  Amengual lifted the mug and drained it. He knew now, for certain and beyond question, that this man was a good peasant.

  ‘Did the daughter try to recover the jewellery and gold which had been in the boat?’ Alvarez asked.

  ‘She tried.’ Amengual refilled his mug. ‘She spoke to all her powerful friends and they found out who’d been the fourth seaman in the launch. He was asked, where was the boat when the destroyer’s launch rammed it?’ He sniggered. ‘He’d been drafted in from Madrid, on his first voyage, not knowing one end of a ship from t’other: hadn’t an idea where the boat went down. So then she hired divers and they dived and dived and they found nothing.’ He banged the table with clenched fist. ‘Bloody nothing,’ he exulted.

  ‘When did Augustin return here?’

  Amengual looked at his wife. He drank.

  She spoke in little more than a whisper. ‘It were four year before he came back and we were married by then.

  We’d asked, but he’d fought for them so no on” cared and we thought him dead . . . But one day, when we was in that field over there . . .’ She pointed. ‘He came to speak to us and I never recognized him. Sweet Mary, I never recognized him!’

  ‘But he recognized us,’ said her husband.

  ‘Was he very mentally upset?’ Alvarez asked.

  ‘He was daft,’ replied Amengual directly, but compassionately.

  ‘Did he remember much of what had happened to him during the war?’

  Neither of them answered.

  ‘What did he say when you asked him about the time he was injured?’

  ‘He just laughed,’ she answered, with shame.

  ‘Laughed?’ repeated Alvarez, initially surprised.

  She lowered her head.

  Amengual said: ‘The youngsters—them that was too young to have been in the fighting—used to say to him, “What was it like, invading your own land?” And he just laughed. And it became a game with ‘em. Ask Loco what it was like to be shot in the head and see the silly bugger just laugh . . .’

  ‘Did the Marques’s daughter get in touch with him when she heard he was back to learn if he knew where her father’s boat had sunk?’

  ‘Aye, she did that. Not herself, of course. But men came and asked him and even offered him money. And he just laughed at ‘em.’

  ‘Why did he laugh?’

  They both stared at him. They’d explained everything. So how, unless he were mocking them, could he now ask so stupid a question?

  ‘Did he ever explain to you why he laughed?’

  ‘It was because he was a daftie,’ replied Amengual defensively.

  ‘But was he quite as stupid as he behaved? D’you think some of it could have been a camouflage?’

  This completely bewildered them. The story of Augustin Llobera had become history. Now, the detective was asking them to go outside the boundaries of that history—this they could not do.

  Alvarez stared beyond the patio at a patch of aubergines, the purple fruit forming a sharp contrast with the leaves. She had said: ‘I never recognized him. Sweet Mary, I never recognized him!’ And her husband had said: ‘But he recognized us.’ It was impossible now to judge how confused his mind had been, but at least one corner of it had obviously been relatively lucid . . . When people had asked him about the invasion, he’d just laughed and they’d taken this to be further proof of his loonyness. Who but a fool would laugh about such things? . . . Might not a fool who had discovered a way of gaining sweet revenge?

  Ever since Llobera had started work—and in those days a boy had started very young—he’d been a fisherman. So he would have
known the local waters like the back of his hand. During the invasion, when on a moonlit night he’d been sent off from the Aosta in the destroyer’s launch to take the drifting boat in tow and had suddenly been fired at, he’d have known almost to the metre where he was. He’d been shot and the injury to his head had cost him much of his reason—but why shouldn’t memories of the shooting, even in a confused state, have stayed with him?

  He’d returned home four years later after God knows what privations and for the first time had learned that the Marques de Orlocas had had the family fortune aboard that boat. He’d also have learned that the surviving daughter had done all she could to recover the jewellery and plate, but all attempts had failed because the sunken boat could not be found. And he’d have known where that boat lay. He could have told the Orlocas daughter and made himself some money—more money than he could ever hope to earn—but nothing on God’s earth would make him help her, the last representative of a family he hated and who had injured him for life. No! He was going to hug his knowledge to himself and then one day he’d salvage the fortune and gloat over it and laugh and laugh because it was hers by legal right, but he had possession of it . . .

  Then, probably when drink had upset his judgement even more than usual, he’d let slip a hint of the truth to a foreigner who was a scuba-diver . . .

  CHAPTER 16

  Alvarez did not get back to Puerto Llueso until nine that night. He parked opposite Tracey’s flat, crossed the road, and climbed the stairs to her patio. She was not in and there was no note for him on the front door. She’d obviously decided to go and have a coffee at a cafe to while away the time until he arrived. He sat down on one of the patio chairs and stared out at the bay, looking as if washed by an impressionist’s brush.

  Night set in, at first almost imperceptibly, then seemingly suddenly. The lighthouse at the end of the eastern arm of the harbour began to flash and the street lighting was switched on. He checked the time. And suddenly he was hit by the icy fear that something had happened to her.