Horse Under Water (7 page)

It was another hot sunny day on Monday. I stayed behind in the house, which Charly described as ‘just cosy’. I said I thought that she had her hands full of H.K. and Giorgio and she said how did I know it wasn’t the other way about. I didn’t. Charly borrowed my comb, fixed her hair and returned the comb within one minute and a half. We walked down to the market place. She had established terms of easy familiarity with the men while not alienating the women. She spoke Portuguese with a natural fluency, even knowing the local names for some of the vegetables and fish. The women saw in her the emancipation they all sought, while the men watched her and wondered if she was something they could deal with over either table or pillow.

She wore a pale-pink sleeveless dress that made her arms look very tanned. Her hair was an unbleached white, the colour of Portland stone. She paused to pat a dog that sat in the middle of
the hot road. She whistled after the gas man, and the vegetable boy let her work the shredding machine, piling cabbage into heaps of wire wool and sending razor-blades of carrots and pumpkin to join the hairpins of beans.

She cleaved the yellow hands of bananas with a jab of the knife, criticized the garlic, prodded the tomatoes and put nail marks into the beans. They liked her.

We walked through the fish market. The flat concrete benches were ashine with bream and gilt-head, pilchards, sardines and mackerel. Outside, the sun reflected off the sea with a million flashing pinpoints of light, as though every bird was sitting there on the ocean top flashing angry white wings.

The painted fishing boats were drawn up high from the water’s edge and packed as densely as the finish line at Ford’s. Most of them were a vivid ultramarine-blue inside. Outside were bands of light green, faded pink, black, and white. On the prows signs were painted: an eye, a horse or a name. Some carried a big mop of animal hair for luck. The boats that had been out in the rain on Sunday night now, their headsails slackly raised, made an encampment of pointed canvas shapes. Here and there were men checking the nets for holes or rearranging them under the hot sun.

As we left the fish market the little bell clanged for the tax assessor. In the sunlight moray eel was drying, and on the cobblestones a man in a shirt either dark-blue with light-blue patches or vice
versa was scrubbing the big wooden fish-weighing machine. Charly asked him if he had sold out. He said ‘yes’, and when she called him a moderately rude Portuguese name he ran off to fetch the spider crabs that he was pretending he hadn’t saved for her.

Even the policeman hitched up his patent-leather belt and smiled, and Charly’s stock went even higher. No one had seen him smile before.

Each year the building with the bell is painted a mustard colour and the bar next door a deep tomato red, but the sun bleaches them lighter every day until the colour all but disappears. Inside the bar the star-patterned tiled floor joins the star-patterned tiled walls. The sunlight that lies inside the doors like two white mats reflects coolly among the marble-topped tables and crippled blue chairs, and framed colour pictures of Glamis, the Tower of London and the Queen with Salazar. In happy co-existence is a big sleepy ginger cat and a noisy white cockerel named Francois. The sailors were calling, ‘Sing, Francis’ to make it crow for Charly when Joe MacIntosh came in. He said, ‘We’ve raised one canister – are you coming?’

Fernie came into the bar just as we were leaving. He watched us with unblinking gaze.

The window shutters were closed. In the dark front room Giorgio was sitting waiting for us. Singleton was tidying the boat and gear. He’d be back any moment.

Joe said, ‘We decided to wait for you, sir.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, like I was taking the helm of the
Queen Elizabeth.

Over the newspaper-covered table the 60-watt bulb shone on to the green steel canister. The edges and corners were rounded and sealing compound joined two equal-shaped sides.

I told Joe to get the Polaroid Land camera. He brought it complete with flash and a green filter to give us a maximum detail in the green paintwork. He took six shots. The prints were satisfactory.

Joe took a small pair of pliers and applied himself to the canister until it creaked open on its ancient hinges. None of us, I think, was expecting much, but we did expect something a little more rewarding. There were a couple of handfuls of
chalky cotton wool, not very good quality, a tattered piece of canvas about as large as a man’s handkerchief, some torn pieces of white paper, and a twenty-dollar bill, crumpled and dirty. Charly reached across for the twenty-dollar bill, but as she picked it up the racket of a two-stroke motor cycle became louder, until it cut immediately under the shuttered window.

Charly mouthed the word ‘Fernie’, and sewed a frown in hasty tacks across her forehead.

It didn’t matter, of course, we merely hid the canister before letting Fernie in, then took him to the kitchen for coffee. He accepted a cup in his polite laconic manner, smiled pleasantly and said he was bearing ‘a message of a confidential nature from the first citizen of the region’.

I asked him who the first citizen of the region was. Fernie answered, ‘Senhor Manuel Gambeta do Rosario da Cunha, a very great gentleman if you will allow me to tell you, sir.’

I heard Singleton’s voice from the balcony calling, ‘So what was in it?’

‘I have a principle, Senhor Fernandes Tomas, of allowing anyone to tell me anything at any time.’

‘Me too, sir,’ he said. He gave no sign of having heard Singleton, then he gave me an address to which I was invited at 5 p.m. to ‘learn something to advantage’.

‘I shall meet you there.’ He picked up his black trilby from the marble hallstand and kicked up his
bike. He sped past the narrow whitewashed walls of the cobbled street. He didn’t look back.

Inside the house I found everyone sitting around looking at
two
twenty-dollar bills. The serial numbers were twenty-three digits apart.

‘Two,’ I said. ‘I thought there was only one in the container.’

‘There was,’ Joe said. ‘Charly brought in its twin brother out of the dirty-linen cupboard.’

I looked at Charly.

‘It was in the pocket of one of Harry Kondit’s dirty shirts,’ she said lamely. ‘I’d offered to wash them for him.’

I said nothing.

‘Not all his shirts, just the synthetic fibres,’ she said.

‘O.K.,’ I told her, ‘but don’t get so friendly that you’ll miss him if he suddenly disappears.’

West of Albufeira there is a view across gently sloping fields of ash-grey fig and vines to the blue sea three kilometres away.

A patio rings with the voices of fishermen and shopkeepers of Albufeira. On the sun-bleached wooden tables are plates of black cuttlefish and moray dried in the sun and fried crisp. The new crop of wine is drunk and discussed and drunk and discussed until the next crop appears. Pressed in the old Moorish fashion (while still in the jute sacks) the cloudy rosé catches the throat like a
fado.
On the next hill white tower-like windmills, their canvas sails furled, am asterisks upon the horizon. Beyond them the station marks a spot where the railway from Lisbon grasps towards Albufeira and fails to make it by six kilometres.

Fernie shook hands amid tearing of bread and lifting of glasses. He pulled the stiff door beyond the terrace and it sang a choir-like note, echoing and vibrating. Inside the door it was dark. Barrels
dribbled into bottles for the drinkers outside. Past tubs of black olives and bowls of green ones were boxes overflowing with figs. Fernie ran his hands through the sack and gave me a handful. We walked out through the far door. To the left and right low white walls provided picture frames around the red soil. Ahead, olive trees marked a brightly tiled path to a pale-blue building with complex white decorations. It sat across the landscape like a Wedgwood teapot. It was one of the old baronial houses or
montes
that dominate estates of cork, olive and fig. Black pigs snuffled under the olive trees and from behind the building a dog barked as if expecting no reply.

Fernie pushed open the wrought-iron gate and, holding it open for me, said in slow, careful English, ‘You
are
in contact with Mr Smith?’

‘Of course I am,’ I lied quickly.

He nodded silently and left me alone at the house of Senhor Manuel Gambeta do Rosario da Cunha, first citizen of the region.

By 5 p.m. in October the sun is well down. To the north the mountains were intensely mauve and the sun, hitting the higher of the white houses, made them as pink as the potted geraniums along the walls.

The last rays of the sun did a spray job on one side of da Cunha’s bony head, and behind him the gold lettering of Mommsen’s
History of Rome
and Balzac’s complete works made football signals over his shoulder. The house was richly furnished
and I didn’t have to be asked to dinner to know that the cruet wouldn’t be plastic.

On da Cunha’s simple mahogany desk was a porcelain-and-gold pen set, a gold letter-opener, an elegant sealing-wax holder, a seal and half a dozen foolscap sheets of fine handwriting. They weren’t held down by Coca-Cola caps either.

‘I understand you to be attempting to locate a lost article by dredging the sea floor.’

It wasn’t an exact description, but it wasn’t a question either. I said nothing.

Da Cunha removed his gold-rimmed spectacles. There was a bright red mark on the side of his thin nose where they had rested. I wondered just how political you had to be to have a set-up like this.

‘In the course of time this coast has attracted adventurers of all sorts. Not all of them have sought recently-lost treasure, and some of them have been far from successful. The town of Olhao was built entirely from the profits made by selling to both sides during the Cadiz affair.’

He said ‘Cadiz affair’ as though it had happened last week instead of the sixteenth century.

‘However, in the case of your party I am of the opinion that the motives are not entirely honourable.’

He paused, and then said, ‘I am hoping to provoke a reply.’

‘Your English is excellent,’ I said.

‘I spent the years of 1934 and 1935 at Peterhouse College, but you avoid my question.’

‘I’m not sure how your ideas of honour could be expected to key in with mine,’ I said. ‘You could buy a pair of shoes for every barefoot kid in Albufeira with that pen set.’

‘Ten years ago I would have been tempted to explain why you are so wrong. Now, however …’ his voice trailed away.

The sun had disappeared over the hill now, leaving only a few fiery trees to mark its passage. Da Cunha hooked his spectacles over one ear and wriggled his nose into them.

‘There is no discussion necessary. I am able to give you what you are looking for and I trust that then you will leave the Algarve and its people and not return.’

He walked slowly across to the corner of the room, the rich Persian carpet switching off the sound-track of his footfalls. He slid his hand into the shelf of loosely-packed books and removed about six between compressed palms. In the space behind the books was a brown-paper parcel about half the size of a cigar box. He tugged at a red velvet cord and then, bringing the parcel over to me, he put it on the mahogany desk.

I didn’t touch it.

‘I resent it,’ da Cunha said, ‘the whole manner of it, I resent it, tell your Mr Smith that, I resent it very much.’

I thought, ‘I’ll tell him all right – if I ever meet him.’ Da Cunha offered me coffee, while I wondered who the ubiquitous Mr Smith was, and how
he connected with this little gang of Portuguese pirates.

Coffee came in the only way it could travel in a house like that: in a silver pot attended by Limoges cups and saucers. On a side plate were soft marzipan cakes with a moist egg-yolk in the innermost centre. Da Cunha forced three of them on me in quick succession.

‘I think of our Algarve as the secret garden of Europe,’ he said as he poured the coffee. He flicked a finger towards the decimated plate of sweets.

‘Almonds, figs, finest grapes in Europe, passable champagne. Wonderful olives, walnuts, oranges, tangerines, pomegranates; and lobster, squid, crab, eels, shrimps, sardines, cuttlefish, octopus; more than I can put my tongue to. Upon the upturned eaves of these houses (upturned to ward the evil eye away, as Portuguese sailors discovered in China) – upon these eaves sits the small nightingale so cherished by the Arab poet.’

‘No fooling,’ I said. I sipped my coffee and offered him a High Life cigarette – a cheap local brand. He declined and lit an oval Turkish which he discovered in a carved ivory box.

‘There is a story told of the region,’ da Cunha went on. ‘It tells of a Moorish prince who married a Russian queen. She pined away thinking of her snow-covered northern home, until one February morning she awoke and looked from her window to see the white blossoms of the almond tree
covering our whole land. You would love our Algarve in February.’

‘I love it now in my own bourgeois way,’ I told him, helping myself to another cheese of almond. He nodded.

With the second pot of coffee he told me of the São Marcos festival, when monks whip a calf on the church steps in order that all the cattle ills and troubles of the year fall upon that one poor calf. I drank the coffee and mused.

Mr Smith is somehow involved with the car following me down the
A
3. He has R.N. Signals Gibraltar doing a wire-tap job on me; when I get here his name is brandished on all sides, and now someone is giving me presents because they think he and I are pals. I knew how that calf felt.

With the smoked paprika-and-pork sausage da Cunha told me of the climb to the top of a hill on the day of São Vincente. If the flaming torch is blown out, preparations are made for a good year. If it stays alight, the farm-hands are sacked. Half a dozen cold beers later we were on to the witches’ sabbath of St John’s night, when boys and girls jump hand in hand over bonfires. The girl burns the flower of a purple thistle in the flames and plants the stalk. Only true love makes the stalk flower.

‘Fascinating,’ I said. Senhor Manuel Gambeta do Rosario da Cunha got up from the desk and walked to the door, where he had a whispered conversation. Then he told me briefly of the twelve
grapes that must be eaten on New Year’s Eve at midnight while drums, trumpets, and bells sound in every square in Portugal: only thus can twelve months of happiness be ensured. The door opened.

It was dark outside and Senhor da Cunha lit the little green-shaded brass lamp and cleared a space on the desk. The maid, in formal white cap and black dress, put a tray down on the desk. There was a lop-sided Portuguese loaf, butter, a red spider crab open and ready to eat, and a bowl of creamy fish soup floating with pink shrimps.

‘The local cognac is good enough to follow such a small snack,’ said da Cunha with Portuguese hospitalitity, ‘and perhaps a little of the sweet anise liquor with a fresh pot of coffee.’

As I left he clicked his heels and said what a pleasure it was to talk with such an educated and cultured person. He wanted to send Maria through the garden with me to carry the lantern, but I insisted upon taking it myself. Halfway to the iron gate a gust of wind blew the wavering light out. There was a thin nail-pairing of moon, and behind the house the dog began to bark again. Beyond the hydrangea flowers and the high wall, grey-blue in the moonlight, a two-stroke motor cycle started up.

I moved into the shadow of the wall and looked back towards the house. Only the light from the upstairs study shone across the garden. I hopped over a low wall and landed in the soft earth. I shook my head and tried to disperse the effect of
the alcohol. I felt the bite of my pistol under the armpit. There was no one in sight; I walked along in the soft earth, quite happy at the idea of footmarks being discovered the next morning. Beyond the gate, where the motor-cycle tracks were still fresh, was an excavation. It was nearly seven feet long. I looked into it. It was three feet deep. It had another few feet to go before it could be called a well-made grave.

There was a simple wooden board at the head of it. It said,
Here lies the body of a petty officer of the German Navy, name unknown. Washed ashore May 2 1945. May his soul rest with God.

I went back to where the car was parked high on the verge. I found the car key under a pocketful of almonds and walnuts and the motor buzzed calmly into life. What was that local saying that da Cunha had quoted – ‘Italy, a place to be born, France, a place to live, and here is a place to die.’

Back at the house I had four small cups of coffee before I felt anything like sober and before anyone had summoned the courage to ask me what I had learned to my advantage.

‘It won’t be ready for me until tomorrow,’ I said airily. I could hardly tell them that I had forgotten to bring it. ‘Tomorrow,’ I said to Joe MacIntosh, ‘you and I both return to London.’

As I went to sleep that night the big grave was fresh in my mind, but the chisel marks on the headboard were even fresher.