Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

The far wall was curved, and there the light picked out a number of objects; statuary mostly, save for one. I’d never seen a giraffe before, not even in a zoo, but I guessed that this one was perhaps half-grown. It stood maybe eight feet tall, long neck crested by its small face, its spotted amber coat shining, stock-still; stuffed.

It held my gaze until I was able to tear it away to look at what lay immediately before me. There were two long rectangular slabs, each ten feet long, four feet wide, six inches thick, flat and standing proud of the floor. In the stone to the right a simple cross had been cut. Its neighbour was unmarked.

‘This is the Delma,’ said Davidoff. ‘This is the grave of Gala, the inspiration of Dali.’

‘And this?’ I asked, pointing to the second tombstone.

‘This was for Dali himself. This is where it is said that Salvador declared he would be buried, but he never was.’

‘Why not?’

My little friend shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? Some say that he forgot how much he loved her. In the end, as always, he was as crazy as a bedbug. People could pour things into his mind. Whether this was poured or not no one knows, but when he died, the people of Figueras just announced that he had decided he should be buried in the museum there.’

‘But how could they do that?’

‘Easy. Because everything of Dali belongs to a foundation now. They have the pow and when Salvador died, well, it was god’s mouth to their ears. So in Figueras the flamboyant man lies. And Gala lies here by herself.’

His face twisted into a grimace. ‘But what has happened since is not good. This place, her private home, has been opened as another museum, another tourist attraction. I do not like that. No one came here when she was alive without her asking them. Why should it be different now she is dead?’

He crossed himself, barely noticeably, and motioned me towards the doorway. We left in silence. The sun was shining into the courtyard when we emerged. ‘Did you know Dali?’ I asked him.

He smiled, for the first time since we had come to Pubol. ‘Everyone knew Dali. Dali belonged to all Catalunya. I guess he still does.’

I looked across the yard. Gala’s castle even had its own souvenir shop. I wandered across and looked in at the postcards, posters, and other memorabilia. Among them was a large coffee table book of the artist’s life and work, translated into French and English.

I went to pick one up, but Davidoff shook his head. ‘No good. I know more than you will find in there. Let’s go back to L’Escala. This has been a long day for me.’

‘Why not end it,’ I asked him, ‘by coming to our place for dinner? I have something I’d like to show you.’

‘Dinner? Yes. I would like that. First I must go back to Shirley’s and sleep for a little. I must be fresh if I am to pay court to Primavera.’

Davidoff had never been to our apartment, so I promised that I would be waiting for him at the church at eight o’clock that evening.

I had never seen his car, but when it came chugging round the bend I didn’t have to look to see who was inside. It was an ancient Seat 500, rear-engined, and revving away like a sewing machine in distress. Once its paint had been silver, but time and the Tramuntana, the cold north wind which drives the sand like rain, had turned it into a shade beyond conventional description.

It was a Noddy car with a roof on, one of those machines which you either love or want to deliver straight to the nearest crusher. I loved it, and so did Davidoff. He beamed with pride as he eased it from its flat out crawl to a dead stop, and as he climbed out and locked the door, I noticed that he had left it in gear. A wise precaution, I thought.

If the ancient had been spruced up for our morning outing, for the evening he was resplendent. He wore a black silk shirt, with a black cravat tied high at the neck, black leather trousers and black patent shoes which shone with a light of their own. His skin shone like oiled olive wood and his close-cut hair was slicked with dressing. To top it all off his eye patch was satin with sparkles set in it.

As he stepped up to me, hand outstretched, I caught a whiff of Bay Rum.

‘Well met again, my young friend,’ he said. ‘May you rue the day when you permitted me to be the suitor of Primavera.’

I laughed. ‘Strut your stuff, old man,’ I said, probably a little more brashly than I had really intended. ‘The lady is waiting for us upstairs.’

Davidoff had brought with him a bottle of really good Cava, straight from the fridge. Not one of your Freixenets, which are all right in themselves, but a Mas Caro, vintage brut, which was better than most champagnes.

We did it justice on our terrace as a large sea bass steamed gently in a kettle on the stove, as the guacamole salad chilled in the fridge and as the candles in their sconces gradually took more and more effect in the darkening evening.

‘You are very private here,’ said Davidoff, oozing his snakelike charm at Prim and treating me to a show of tolerant disdain. It came to me that maybe I liked him so much because he reminded me of my old iguana flatmate.The only difference was that Wallace never tried to seduce any of my girlfriends.

‘Yes, we are,’ she replied, showing a leg through the split in her yellow skirt. ‘It’s very good for the tan.’

‘You must be careful of your skin, my dear,’ he cautioned. ‘It is the most sensitive organ of your body … save one, of course … and you must treat it with respect. Use the finest creams and moisturisers, or the sun will age it before its time. I see on the beach the old ladies who were foolish in their youth. Now their skin hangs on them like ill-fitting sacks. Cara mia, I would shoot you now before I would see you become like them.’

We ate on the terrace, too, but in consideration of Davidoff’s age, I lit one of our butane gas heaters and set it near him in the open doorway. He frowned at me as I positioned it, as if he thought I was reminding Prim of his years … which of course I was … but he didn’t ask me to take it away.

My guacamole salad hit the spot, and Prim’s sea bass was done to perfection. Our guest attacked them with an enjoyment that would have gladdened any cook’s heart, and polished off his poached fresh figs in marsala by wiping the dish clean with his last piece of bread.

During the meal I tried to lure him back to the subject of Dali, but he refused the bait. Instead he spoke seriously of the Franco years, of the oppression of Catalunya, and of the brutality of the Civil War.

‘I lost many friends,’ he said sadly. ‘I lost the sight of my eye too. A piece of shrapnel.’

I looked at him in surprise, at his first admission of his years. Wounded in a war sixty years earlier.

‘You fought against Franco?’

‘Yes. In vain as it turned out.’ He looked at Prim with a flashing, gleaming smile. ‘I was only a boy, you understand. But it was for my freedom as a man.’

‘And did you stay here, afterwards?’ She was staring at him, captivated as far as I could see.

‘No. I could not bear it. My friends and I went to America. We worked there for most of the forties. That was when I learned most of my English, and picked up this goddamn strange accent.

‘Eventually, Franco felt secure enough to let the exiles come back, although he still kept Catalunya under his boot. We were the only Spanish with the cojones to stand up to him.’ He smiled at Prim, almost coyly. ‘I hope your Spanish is not so good, Senora.’

She grinned, and I could have sworn she was flirting with him. ‘Good enough, Senor. But Franco’s balls must have been bigger than yours, because he died an old man, in his bed.’