A Dead Man in Barcelona

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Enrico?’

  He remembered now: the warder.

  ‘Not just Enrico,’ said Manuel. ‘They’ve all come.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘All the family. Wife, mother, even the children. Three! And little buggers, all of them. But I didn’t give them coffee. I sent them out. “Either they go or I go!” I said. “All right,” says Enrico, quick. “I’ll take them down to the playground.” “No, you won’t!” said his mother. “There could be money in this!” “No, you won’t!” said his wife. “There’s a woman in that playground and you’ll fall on her just as you did on the other one.”’

  ‘What is this?’ said Seymour.

  Manuel led him inside. There, at the table in the kitchen, were Enrico and his family, a row of empty cups before them.

  ‘I got a message,’ said Manuel.

  ‘I sent it,’ said the mother.

  ‘I certainly didn’t!’ said Enrico.

  ‘You were not to be trusted,’ said his wife, bursting into tears. ‘I shall never trust you again! Never! Never!’

  ‘That a son of mine –’ said his mother.

  ‘Not a son, but a beast!’ said his wife, through sobs. ‘A ravenous beast!’

  ‘Now, look here –’ started Enrico.

  ‘And a dirty Arab, too!’ said his wife. ‘That is what hurts!’

  ‘That a son of mine –’

  ‘Conchita first,’ said the warder’s wife, ‘and then an Arab! How many more? Oh, how many more?’

  ‘Disgusting,’ said his mother. ‘That a son of mine –’

  ‘Look, I haven’t done anything –’ said the warder desperately.

  ‘Not for want of trying!’ said his wife darkly.

  ‘Not for want of trying!’

  ‘She approached me!’

  ‘And you surrendered at once!’

  ‘No, I didn’t! I just agreed to take him some food, that’s all.’

  ‘Ah, but was it all?’

  ‘She gave me three hundred pesetas.’

  ‘And what else did she give you, Enrico?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Three hundred pesetas is a lot of money,’ said the mother, watching.

  ‘She didn’t give you herself, by any chance?’ said his wife implacably.

  ‘No, she didn’t!’ protested Enrico. Then, goaded beyond endurance: ‘If only she had!’

  ‘But we know this!’ said Seymour. ‘There’s nothing new here. You all knew it.’

  ‘Ah, but what we didn’t know was that she was an Arab.’

  ‘I thought she was a decent Spanish lady,’ said Enrico’s wife.

  ‘Men are all the same!’ said his mother.

  ‘An Arab! You didn’t tell us she was an Arab. You let me think that she was a decent, honest Spanish woman. Suffering because the man she loved was in jail! Prepared to do anything to help the man she loved! Smuggle in files to cut through the bars of his cell window –’

  ‘There aren’t any bars! There wasn’t a file!’

  ‘She would have been ready to die for him if necessary!’

  ‘Ah!’ said the mother, sighing. ‘Women are like that.’

  ‘And now you tell me she was an Arab!’

  ‘That a son of mine –’

  ‘No, no, don’t start that again!’

  ‘– should betray the trust placed on him by His Excellency!’ finished the mother, eyeing her son balefully.

  ‘And his country!’ said his wife spiritedly.

  ‘Look, you were all in favour of it!’ said the warder. ‘You wanted to send in pies for all of them –’

  ‘Not for Arabs,’ said his mother.

  ‘To think of you talking to her!’ said his wife. ‘Fondling her –’

  ‘Fondling her?’ said her husband desperately.

  ‘Very probably,’ said his wife, facing up to things bravely.

  ‘I never touched –’

  ‘I never ‘Beast!’

  ‘All men are like that,’ said his mother philosophically. ‘Even my son!’

  ‘Even your son!’ echoes Enrico’s wife.

  ‘Not to mention his father.’

  ‘My God!’ said Enrico. ‘You’ll be bringing in Grandfather next.’

  ‘Him too –’

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘Was that what you wanted to tell me?’ said Seymour.

  ‘We thought you would like to know. That she was an Arab.’

  ‘Well,’ said Seymour thoughtfully. ‘You’re right. I would.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief!’ said Manuel.

  ‘You thought it was Dolores, didn’t you?’ said Seymour.

  ‘What?’ said Dolores.

  ‘You thought it was Dolores who had given Enrico the poisoned food.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Manuel, ‘yes, I did.’

  ‘You thought –’ said Dolores, stupefied.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Manuel.

  ‘You surely did not think . . . But that was a terrible thing to think!’

  ‘I thought so, too,’ said Seymour. ‘For a moment.’

  ‘That is awful! How could you even suppose –’

  ‘I am sorry, Dolores,’ said Manuel. ‘Very sorry!’

  ‘But I loved him!’ she said.

  ‘It was partly because I knew that you loved him,’ said Seymour. ‘Loved him so much. And thought that perhaps he did not love you.’

  ‘Our love was not like that,’ she said. ‘We were not jealous of each other. We allowed ourselves things. I knew about him, he knew about me. And it didn’t matter. We found that when we came together, it would be as it always had been. The others were just – flings. For both of us. Really he loved me.’

  ‘Dolores –’

  ‘Yes, he did!’ she insisted. ‘“I’m just your bit on the side,” I said to him once. “Yes, but you’re my special bit on the side,” he said. “you’re like a second wife.” There! You see? He said it. “In fact,” he said, “if I were a Muslim and you were a Muslim and Leila would agree, I’d make you my second wife.” So you see, I was his wife. Almost.’

  ‘Dolores, Dolores!’ said Manuel, shaking his head.

  ‘I knew about his other women. Of course I did! But I didn’t mind. They wouldn’t last, I knew that. They never did. They never worried me. Except once. It was just before he died. He’d told me about this one. She was the wife of a high-up. She’d fallen for him, bang! Couldn’t live without him. She said. But she would have to. She was already married. And she was a Catholic, too. These married women!’ Dolores said, sighing. ‘Always getting in the way!

  ‘That what I told myself. She couldn’t be a real rival. She couldn’t be his wife. That’s what I told myself. But then I thought – this was after my visit to the prison, after Tragic Week, when I was doing a lot of thinking – I thought that maybe she felt like me, maybe she felt as much as me. And I – I almost felt sorry for her.

  ‘But then I thought, maybe she felt like me, and was just as jealous as I was. Because I was jealous, despite what I said just now. Deep down I was jealous. Very. And I thought maybe she was, too. And that maybe – maybe she had killed him. Because of that.

  ‘And then I thought, maybe it wasn’t her. It was him. Her husband. The high-up. Well, it could have been. He wouldn’t have liked it, would he? And he could have done it, couldn’t he? While he had Sam there, at his mercy . . . Well, he could, couldn’t he? He could have done it.

  ‘But then I thought, perhaps I was imagining things. I tried to put it out of my mind. But I couldn’t. I kept imagining . . . and then you came,’ she said to Seymour, ‘and I thought, maybe he will find out. And I thought, if it is a woman I will kill her. And if it’s a man, well, perhaps the authorities will kill him. And if they don’t, I will.

  ‘But then I thought, if it is this high-up, maybe he’s got it all sorted out. I mean, why haven’t they found him out already? It must be because they’re not looking. Because this man, the high-up, has got it all fixed. And I thought
maybe this new man, this Englishman, coming to it from outside, will get somewhere. Because they won’t find it so easy to fix him.

  ‘That is what I thought. But now the warder says the woman who gave him the food to take in was an Arab. So I couldn’t be right, could I, about her? But I could still be right about him. The high-up. He could have got someone else to do it. It would be easy for him to get an Arab.

  ‘I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to think now.’

  She burst into tears and Manuel led her away gently.

  Seymour stepped down into the underground café. It was more full than it had been before. They were all Arabs, of course. He was conscious of them scrutinizing him surreptitiously. He hoped that they would recognize him and know that he had been before and that he had talked to Ibrahim, so that he had, as it were, credentials. The waiter came to him more quickly than he had done before and served him coffee, so that, perhaps, he thought, they did.

  He didn’t mention Ibrahim this time, just sat there.

  A man went out and a little later Ibrahim came in and sat down beside him.

  ‘You are still here, then?’ he said.

  ‘For just a little longer. Then I shall go back to England.’

  ‘Did you speak to Leila?’

  Seymour nodded.

  ‘I think she plans to build a life here,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘Despite losing her husband.’

  ‘That is brave,’ Ibrahim said. ‘But perhaps she is right. Once you have made the step you shouldn’t go back.’

  Seymour looked round the café with its solely Arab clientele.

  ‘Isn’t this a kind of going back?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. But you can only go so far at a time. Later, perhaps, you will take another step. What was it you wanted to know?’

  ‘I want to know if any of you visited Lockhart when he was in prison.’

  Ibrahim made a little motion with his hand and the waiter brought more coffee.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Others did. I wondered if his friends did, too.’

  ‘It was just after Tragic Week,’ said Ibrahim, ‘and most of us were lying low.’

  ‘You must have talked together, though. And possibly about him.’

  ‘We talked, certainly. And, when we heard, about him. There was a lot to talk about and many of us were in two minds.’

  ‘About Lockhart?’

  ‘Yes. But mostly about what was to be done. And we were still deliberating when we heard that he was dead. You have to remember this was just after Tragic Week and the police were looking for us. They were looking for others as well, of course, but it was thought best if they did not see us together for a while. So, for a while, the community was fragmented.’

  ‘And then you heard that Lockhart was dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  Ibrahim shrugged. ‘That a good man was gone.’ He hesitated. ‘At least, many of us thought that.’

  ‘And some didn’t?’

  ‘Some didn’t.’

  ‘What did they think?’

  ‘That perhaps it was best if it ended.’

  ‘Even like this?’

  ‘Even like this.’

  ‘Did you think that?’

  ‘I did not see how it could end like this.’

  ‘Because . . .?’

  ‘Because in the Arab world things like this never end.’ He sighed. ‘I sometimes think that is the reason why I am in Spain and not in Algeria. If you never let things end, what hope is there? And yet this is all so bound up with the way we are.’

  ‘And the way Lockhart was?’

  Unexpectedly, Ibrahim laughed.

  ‘You could say that,’ he said wryly. ‘But in a different way.’

  He touched Seymour’s hand.

  ‘But I’ll tell you this,’ he said. ‘That is what Leila thinks. Let it end, she thinks. Let it end here. And I think that is why she will never go back. She wants to put it behind her, all that has happened, and not – not pursue it.’

  Seymour nodded. ‘I had a specific reason for asking if any of you had visited Lockhart when he was in prison. Perhaps I should have made it clearer: if any of you had visited the prison while he was there, not necessarily Lockhart himself.’

  Ibrahim looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  Seymour hesitated. How far could he go? How much could he rely on Ibrahim being on his, on Lockhart’s side? He hesitated, and then plumped.

  ‘Lockhart was poisoned in his cell,’ he said. ‘Probably by some food that the warder was given to take in to him. A pie, probably. The warder was given the food by a woman. She gave him money, too, to take it to Lockhart. The woman was an Arab.’

  ‘An Arab?’ said Ibrahim. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ibrahim sat there for some time thinking. ‘I am shocked,’ he said. ‘I do not know a woman from our community who could have done that,’ he said. ‘But, as I told you, after Tragic Week, the community was very fragmented. Even so . . .’

  He thought some more.

  ‘I do not know who it could be,’ he said. ‘Even though there were disagreements among us over Lockhart, I find it hard to believe that . . .’

  ‘Do you really find it so hard to believe,’ said Seymour, ‘knowing the kind of man that Lockhart was?’

  ‘I know the kind of man that Lockhart was,’ said Ibrahim, ‘especially, and I think this is what you are saying, the kind of man that Lockhart was as regards women. But Arab women! It is not with Arab women as it is with Spanish women. Or English women, as far as I know. An Arab woman is hedged around. It is not easy for her to meet a man, let alone . . . Which is, I think, what you have at the back of your mind. Harder here, even, in some ways, than it is back in Algeria. We are a small community. Everyone knows everything. And we are, as I think you were suggesting earlier, defensive. We look inwards still. Too much. Not outwards. That kind of thing – our women – we are jealous of. It touches us closely. Our pride, perhaps, but also our fear. I find it hard to believe . . .’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Seymour, ‘it was an Arab woman.’

  Ibrahim sat there for some time turning it over in his mind. Then he said, ‘Go away for a while. An hour perhaps. And then come back.’

  Chantale, meanwhile, had been doing what she had taken to doing more and more when Seymour was away. She had gone out into the plaza and sat on a bench beneath a palm tree. At first when she had been left alone she had gone for a walk along Las Ramblas. The feeling of release and freedom which she had experienced on the first day was still with her; but she was beginning now to have a sense of horizons closing in, that things couldn’t go on like this.

  And, of course, they couldn’t. Sooner or later, and sooner rather than later, Seymour would have to go back to London. And she?

  Well, that was the old question, and it was still the question as she sat on the bench. Should she go to London with him? Or should she go back to the place to which her inner strings still pulled her, to Tangier and her mother, and all the little things – the buzz of the bazaars, the fresh smell of mint tea from the cafés, the smells of the horses and donkeys and the strange, musky perfumes of the women, and of the men, too, often – which she was suddenly beginning to miss?

  The truth was she was no further on in answering the question than she had been when she arrived. Should she marry Seymour? Well, yes, increasingly she thought she should. She was beginning to recognize – and this, perhaps, was progress – that she couldn’t manage without him. But did that mean that she had to abandon all that was her life and go with him to some cold, dirty place she had no feeling for? Why couldn’t he come to her? But she knew very well why he couldn’t come to her. She had gone through that. And the idea of the halfway house for both of them, which had been at the back of her mind when she had agreed to come to Spain to see him – that
wouldn’t work, either. She thought of the expatriate Englishmen they had come across in Gibraltar. Did she want Seymour to become like them? No, she certainly did not!

  And what about the Arabs she had met here? They, too, had made that leap from one country to another, looking for a better life. But had they found it? Few of them seemed completely at ease. They clung, or at least the Arabs she had met in Barcelona did, to vestiges of their old life. They remained, she thought, divided souls. But wouldn’t she, if she went to England, be a divided soul, too? And so the debate she was having with herself went on.

  Sometimes Nina would spot her on the bench and when the school had closed for the morning she would come across and sit beside her and eat the roll she had for lunch. They would talk. About what happened to Nina during the morning, about the children – but also about Tangier and Morocco and Algeria. Those places to which Nina’s father had devoted so much of his life. Nina seemed hungry to know about that, as if by recapturing something of that she could recapture something of him.

  Or, perhaps, understand him better. That was what Nina seemed to need, thought Chantale. She felt that Nina was puzzled by her father and could not understand why he had abandoned her. Especially as he seemed to love her. She clung to that. She was sure he had loved her; why, then, hadn’t he wanted to live with her, as other fathers did, with their children?

  Nina was very young, thought Chantale, suddenly feeling very old. What was puzzling Nina was people; what was puzzling her was love.

  And Nina was coming to Chantale for enlightenment! To Chantale, who was probably even more perplexed, just at the moment, than she was.

  This morning, while they were sitting on the bench, Nina’s mother came across to them.

  ‘Señorita?’ said her mother, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘Señorita still,’ said Chantale firmly. ‘Señora Seymour shortly. Perhaps.’

  ‘It is better so,’ said Nina’s mother.

  ‘Mother!’ said Nina crossly.

  ‘It is better so!’ insisted her mother.

  ‘It is probably better so,’ conceded Chantale. ‘But there are other things to be thought of too.’