Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

Seymour looked out from the balcony. The school was winding up for the day.

He went down.

‘You again!’ said Nina.

‘Me again,’ agreed Seymour.

‘I have nothing to say to you.’

‘Ah, but you have. About your father, for instance.’

‘My father?’ said Nina.

‘Lockhart was your father, of course.’

‘How did you know?’

‘You visited him in the prison. As his daughter. The governor told me. And I had guessed it from other things.’

‘I begin to think,’ said Nina, ‘that it would be better to let my father rest in peace.’

‘I think other people are coming to that conclusion.’

‘Who?’ said Nina derisively. ‘The authorities?’

‘Leila.’

‘Leila?’ said Nina, surprised.

‘So I gather.’

Nina needed to think about this.

‘If I were Leila,’ she said, after a moment, ‘I would never do that.’

‘I wonder if she thinks the same about you.’

‘Leila hates me,’ said Nina. ‘She would prefer me not to be here.’

‘Well, I can understand that.’

‘So can I, I suppose. She could not have a child, my mother could. My mother thinks we ought not to let her see us. It is too painful a reminder, she says. But I have to go there if I am to see my mother, and she doesn’t want to move from Gibraltar because her life has always been there: her house, her friends, such relatives as we have. She tries to keep out of Leila’s way.’

‘It is difficult, I can see that.’

‘My mother thought that Leila was afraid — afraid that my mother would one day take him back. Lockhart. Well, there is no chance of that now.’

‘Would you have wanted her to take your father back?’

Nina needed to think again. She needed to think longer this time.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Half of me wanted him to be with us. But the other half of me said that he had never been with us, he had always lived apart. At the time that made me angry. I wanted a real father, like everyone else, not a father-at-a-distance. But it wouldn’t have worked. He wasn’t that kind of man. And perhaps my mother wasn’t really that kind of woman, she just liked to imagine that she was. And perhaps I am not that kind of daughter. I think, actually, I am certainly not that kind of daughter. I was always glad to see him, but we never got on for long. We would argue, quarrel. He thought I was too bitter. He thought I had been in Barcelona too long.’

‘Yes,’ said Seymour, ‘that was what I wanted to know more about.’

‘Me in Barcelona?’ said Nina incredulously.

‘You in Catalonia.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

‘I think you could live in Barcelona for a long time and not be aware that you were also living in Catalonia.’

‘You would have to be blind!’

‘Aren’t many people blind?’

‘Why are you asking me about this?’ she demanded.

‘Because the first time I heard of you was when Hattersley told me about you and the coffins.’

‘Ah, the coffins!’ she said, laughing. ‘We wanted to make an impact.’

‘Well, you certainly made one. Not just on Hattersley but on the British Foreign Office. Not to mention the British Navy. And even the British police.’

‘Did we?’ said Nina, surprised. ‘In Barcelona we didn’t even make the newspapers. But then, we wouldn’t, would we?’

‘You were afraid that people would forget Tragic Week. The authorities were afraid that they would remember.’

‘Well, I’m glad,’ said Nina. ‘I’m glad that the ripples went so far.’

‘The thing is,’ said Seymour, ‘the people you were doing it with were Catalans.’

‘Well?’

‘Not anarchists.’

‘We were doing it for everybody that fell during Tragic Week. And plenty of those were anarchists, I can tell you!’

‘But the people you were doing it with were Catalans.’

‘It happened so, but-’

Seymour shook his head. ‘I don’t think it was an accident that the people you were doing it with were Catalans. They were the ones who, in a way, it was all about. It was the conscription of Catalans for service in North Africa that sparked it off, that led, ultimately, to all the terrible things of Tragic Week. It was not such a central concern for the anarchists. They just jumped on the bandwagon. As did the Arabs in the docks, although they had the excuse that any crackdown by the authorities would almost certainly be aimed as well partly at them. No, in the end it was the Catalans who were behind it. And it was the Catalans that you were working with to see that it was remembered.’

Nina shrugged.

‘So?’ she said.

‘Why was your father out on the streets during Tragic Week?’

‘To see that the Army didn’t get away with murder.’

‘The Arabs think he was out there to see that the Army did not pick on them.’

‘He was out there to see that they did not pick on anybody.’

Seymour shook his head.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I think that your father was out there for a particular purpose. And it was a Catalan purpose.’

‘Well?’ said Nina. ‘He was sympathetic to the Catalans. He admired the Catalans. He believed in the Catalans. As I do.’

‘Up to what point?’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘How far was he prepared to go? What was he prepared to do for them?’

Nina did not respond.

‘He was prepared to go pretty far,’ said Seymour. ‘He was prepared to go out on to the streets for them in Tragic Week. But was he prepared to go further?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Nina.

‘Was he prepared to supply them with arms, for instance?’

Nina turned her back and started to walk away.

‘Was that what the Chief of Police was asking you?’ said Seymour.

Seymour found the Chief of Police, as he had expected, sitting in the bar on Las Ramblas.

‘The reason why I spoke to her,’ said the Chief, ‘is that I worry about her. As I would about my own daughter. “She’s like a daughter to me,” I said to Constanza. That was probably a mistake. You see, God has not blessed us with children and Constanza is sensitive on that point. “Oh,” she said, “like a daughter, is she? Are you sure she’s not like someone else? A wife, for instance? Or a mistress?”

‘ “Constanza,” I said, “how can you say a thing like that? You know I am faithful!” “I know you’re stupid,” she said, “and just the sort of man to fall for a chit of a girl when she makes eyes at you.”

‘ “You are unjust to her,” I said. “No one in their right senses would say she’d make eyes at me. Rather the reverse.”

‘ “Oh?” she said. “So you’ve been disappointed, have you?”

‘ “No,” I said. “I’m just pointing out what anyone can tell you: that the only thing between us has been harsh words. Whenever I try to help her, all I get is rudeness.”

‘ “Playing hard to get, is she?”

‘ “Not at all,” I said. “She’s a child alone, without a father, and has a mother far away, in Gibraltar or some place, and as difficult, from what I hear, as she is.”

‘ “And you want to step in,” she says, sneering, “and be a father to her, is that it?”

‘ “She needs a father,” I say.

‘ “Oh, yes!” she says. “Well, you’re a bigger fool even than I thought. You think she’s taken a fancy for your big moustaches, I suppose!”

‘ “Leave my moustaches out of it!” I say. Although they are rather fine.

‘ “How can I leave them out,” she says, “when you go waving them at every pretty girl you see!”

‘ “I have not been waving them at Nina. As I told you, it’s just that I feel for her as I would for a daughter.”