Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

‘Oh, I don’t know. Make a sail, perhaps? Is that the sort of thing they make sails from?’

‘Why would I want to make a sail?’

‘Maybe it had better be something else. Can you think of another material?’

‘Gingham?’

‘I don’t think they’re likely to have much of that in ships’ stores. Perhaps you’d better put it more generally? “Any chance of getting some material cheap?” That sort of thing.’

‘And who am I supposed to ask?’

‘Don’t go to him directly. Ask around. I have a feeling that the women here will know.’

Senora Lockhart’s house was a large white one with little balconies in front of the upper windows, over which bright red geraniums trailed in abundance. When he rang the bell an Arab servant girl came to the door.

She showed them into a dark entrance hall at the other end of which an open door led into a small inner courtyard, in the middle of which a fountain was playing. At one corner a broad flight of steps led up to a kind of halfverandah, on which were strewn some large leather cushions. They were shown up to these and the servant girl brought them glasses of lemonade.

Chantale looked around her in surprise.

‘It’s just like an Arab house!’ she said.

A moment later Senora Lockhart came on to the verandah and they saw why. She was an Arab herself; small, almost bird-like, with slender arms and feet, middle-aged, and with a sharp Arab face and bright intelligent eyes.

She advanced on Seymour and held out her hand.

‘Mr Seymour?’ she said in English. ‘I am very pleased to see you. My friend, ’Attersley, told me that you might be coming.’

‘And this is Mademoiselle de Lissac,’ said Seymour.

The sharp brown eyes took in Chantale. ‘From Morocco?’

‘Tangier.’

‘I know it well.’

‘You know my mother, perhaps? Madame de Lissac?’

She thought. ‘I think I’ve heard of her in some connection. But, no, I don’t think I’ve actually met her. It’s been a while since I was last in Tangier. And your father: he is French, of course.’

Seymour felt that the sharp eyes had grasped at once much of Chantale’s situation: just possibly because she had known it for herself.

‘Yes,’ said Chantale. ‘But he is dead.’

‘Ah, pardon!’ She took Chantale’s hand in both of hers and pressed it sympathetically. ‘ Un militaire?’

‘Oui.’

‘I am so sorry!’

Back in English. Like many people who were familiar with several languages, like Seymour himself, she moved readily from one to another.

‘You are welcome,’ she said softly to Chantale.

They sat down on the leather cushions.

‘I don’t know if Senor Hattersley explained,’ said Seymour, ‘but I am a policeman from England. And I have come to Spain — and to Gibraltar — to find out what I can about how your husband died.’

‘Yes, he did tell me that,’ said Senora Lockhart. ‘But what he did not tell me, was why anyone in England should be interested in how my husband died.’

‘Because he was English, Senora.’

She laughed. ‘He always denied that. He said he was Scottish and that was quite different.’

‘Perhaps I should have said British.’

‘He would admit to that on occasions,’ she conceded. ‘Especially,’ she added drily, ‘when it suited him.’

‘So I have heard. And I think it is probably partly because of that that people in England are interested in what happened to him.’

‘David ’Attersley again?’

‘Admiral Comber, rather.’

‘Ah, yes. The Admiral.’

‘Does it surprise you that the Admiral should be interested?’

‘I knew about what Lockhart was doing for him, if that’s what you are asking.’

‘The Admiral thinks that could be something to do with his death.’

Senora Lockhart did not respond.

‘There are so many things,’ she said, after a moment, ‘that could be to do with his death.’

‘Yes. Public as well as private.’

‘Public?’

‘What he was doing for the Admiral, for example. But also, perhaps, what he was doing for the Catalonians. Or, for that matter, the anarchists. But also private.’

‘Such as?’

‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me that.’

The Senora did not reply for quite a long time. Then she said, ‘I don’t know that I can tell you that. Or would want to. These things are, as you say, private. And perhaps it is best if they remain so.’

‘I have no wish to pry. But if they are at all to do with his death, is it not right that they should be told?’

‘I do not know. Is there to be no end to the damage?’

She was silent again for a moment and then she said, ‘You spoke of rightness, and you think of truth and of justice. But you think of it in a cold English way. No, I am not fair. I do not know you, nor the way you think. And ’Attersley — well, whatever ’Attersley may be, he is not cold. He is hot that justice should be done to my husband. But there are different sorts of justice. There is the cold, English sort but there is also a justice to feeling, and I do not know what, in the end, is the sort of justice my husband would have wanted. He was English, of course: but he was also — ’ she smiled secretly to herself — ‘a man of feeling. “Why,” I said to him once, “you are almost an Arab!” “I am, I am,” he said. “And that is why you married me.”

‘And it was true. When I first knew him he seemed to me so cold, so stiff, so English. Always calculating. That was how he struck me. Always in control of himself so that he could control others. So unfeeling. But then, suddenly, the feeling would break out, quite unexpectedly, over all sorts of things, trifles, even, and sweep you away, and I loved him for it. Do you understand me, Mademoiselle?’ she appealed to Chantale.

‘I think I do.’

‘An Arab woman is passionate and responds to passion. Is that not so?’

Chantale laughed. ‘I think it is. But perhaps it is so of all women. But I am sure you are right that we do not always read our men. Sometimes we expect passion and it is not there.’

Seymour was not entirely happy about this.

‘And sometimes we don’t expect it but then it suddenly erupts and we are bowled over by it!’

‘Exactly so!’ said Senora Lockhart, delighted. ‘“Bowled over”. That is a good way of putting it. He would have liked that. But that, you see, was how he was. About all sorts of things. The Catalonians! The Algerians! The Moroccans — to make war on them seemed a terrible thing to him, and to use the Catalonians to do it-’

‘Senora,’ said Seymour, ‘forgive me, but you are slipping away. These things are public, but were there not private things, too, that engaged his feelings?’

She gave him a long, appraising look, as if he needed to be weighed up before she would tell him anything.

‘He was a man of feeling, as I have told you. He felt strongly, yes. And sometimes he felt strongly about people.’

‘Particular people?’

‘People are always particular.’

‘You are trying to slip away again, Senora.’

She laughed.

‘Perhaps I am,’ she admitted. ‘But, you see, sometimes with his strong, erratic feelings he hurt people. Unjustly. And why should I add to that injustice? There is, as I said before, a justice to feeling as there is to fact.’

‘Can you help me a little more with that justice to feeling?’

‘I don’t think I can. This is not something that can be approached in a cold, objective, English way. It is, I think, something you have to be an Arab to understand.’

As they were going down the steps into the courtyard, they met a man coming up.

‘Why, Abou!’ cried Senora Lockhart. ‘Where have you been? I expected you an hour ago! This is my brother,’ she said to Seymour and Chantale, ‘and he is always late.’