Jaime was seated at the table in the dining/sitting room, a bottle of brandy and a glass in front of him. Alvarez looked at the bead curtain across the kitchen doorway, from behind which came the sounds of cooking. He said in a low voice: ‘How are things now?’
‘A little while back, she was singing,’ Jaime replied.
Alvarez sat, reached down and opened the sideboard to bring out a tumbler. He poured himself a generous brandy. ‘Didn’t you get some ice?’
‘No.’
It was obvious that Jaime had foregone ice in order to avoid a face-to-face confrontation with his wife. Man or mouse? Alvarez wondered sarcastically.
Dolores began to sing once more.
Singing could indicate many moods and it might be dangerously mistaken to assume that she was expressing contentment. He listened to the words, but although her voice was true, her enunciation was not and it took him time to understand that a young lady in Seville had looked down into the street from her protected eyrie and meeting the gaze of a handsome young man had felt the strings of her heart plucked … Was the handsome young man honourable or heartless? Nothing annoyed Dolores more than men who took advantage of emotionally helpless women … She did not finish the song.
He looked at his glass, then at the bead curtain. A warm brandy was preferable to no brandy, but less welcome than a cold one. Yet to go through to the kitchen for ice might well provoke her annoyance, especially if the song would have ended with betrayal …
The strings of beads parted as she looked into the room. ‘So you’re both back!’
Nervously, they nodded.
‘Where are the children?’
‘I haven’t seen them,’ Jaime muttered.
‘They won’t be far away. Lunch will be in a few minutes.’ She withdrew.
Her tone had been warm and she had not condemned their drinking. Alvarez stood. ‘If you won’t get some ice, I will.’ He went through to the kitchen. ‘I thought Madonna must be in here,’ he said, as he opened a cupboard and brought out the small ice container.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.
‘When I heard the singing, I reckoned it had to be her.’
‘Must you say such stupid things?’ she asked, clearly flattered.
He opened the refrigerator and brought out a plastic tray of ice, pressed out the cubes. ‘What’s for lunch?’
‘Conill amb ceba.’
‘A feast!’
‘Perhaps.’
‘When you do the cooking, nothing less.’ He replaced the tray in the refrigerator, picked up the ice bucket, returned to the dining room. As he sat, he said: ‘Lunch is conill amb ceba.’ He dropped four cubes of ice into his glass.
Jaime drained his glass. ‘This morning her tongue was like a knife, now she cooks one of my favourite dishes.’ He poured himself another drink. ‘I tell you, I’ll be dead and buried and still not begin to understand her. How do you ever know where you are with a woman?’
‘You don’t, which is why they’ve got us by the short and curlies.’
‘If we changed our minds as often as they do, we’d be dizzy.’
The front door banged and there was a clatter of feet on the tiled floors. Juan ran into the room, followed by Isabel. ‘What’s grub?’ he asked loudly, as he came to a stop.
Dolores stepped through the bead curtains. ‘Lunch is almost ready, so you two can lay the table.’
‘That’s a girl’s job,’ Juan said.
‘Boys always help.’
‘Dad and Uncle never do.’
Jaime stared angrily at his son.
‘When men work hard, they need to have time to rest.’ She withdrew.
Jaime leaned forward until the table pressed into his stomach. ‘It’s weird!’
Alvarez nodded. However, the circumstances being what they were, they should heed the old Mallorquin saying, When the almond crop is heavy, eat all you can because next year there may be none. He drained his glass, refilled it.
* * *
Carrer Magallanes was a narrow road on the outskirts of Cardona, and number seventeen was on the eastern side, one of a line of terrace houses that directly fronted the road. From the outside it looked nondescript and, with all shutters closed against the heat, deserted; inside, was a home enjoying many of the luxuries that the success of the tourist trade had brought to the island.
Inés, far more composed than she had been that morning, was dressed in a brightly coloured frock that was sufficiently close fitting to show she was not yet troubled by the excess weight which so often affected the women of the island. ‘I’m in a hurry,’ she said with nervous impatience.
‘It won’t take a moment for you to answer a couple of questions,’ Alvarez answered.
‘Why? I mean, I didn’t even know the señor had had an accident until Lorenzo told us.’
‘D’you mind if I sit down? I’ve had a heavy day and my legs are tired.’
As was so often the case, the front room was for formal occasions and the furniture had been chosen for appearance, not comfort. The wooden chair with a rush seat and an elaborately shaped back dug into him however much he moved around. ‘When I was talking to Dr Sanz, he mentioned the fact that you’d told him you’d seen a car drive away from Son Fuyell last night. Obviously this might be important, so I need to know more about it. What was the time?’
She fidgeted with her fingers.
‘Was it before or after dark?’
She spoke so hurriedly that the words jostled each other. ‘I was all shocked. I mean, first me and Susana thought Lorenzo was joking, then we found he wasn’t. And when the doctor came, he started asking questions and it was like he was blaming us … I just didn’t know what I was saying.’
‘Are you now suggesting you didn’t see a car leaving Son Fuyell last night?’
She looked longingly at the front door.
‘Perhaps you were with a friend?’
She opened her mouth to speak, closed it.
‘If you were, where’s the harm?’
‘Mum and Dad don’t like him,’ she said sullenly.
‘That’s far from unusual. Lots of parents dislike their daughters’ friends for no good reason.’
‘They won’t listen.’
‘Once again, quite normal.’
‘They’re so old-fashioned. Expect me to be back home in the evening when everyone else is out having fun.’
‘They worry you might be having the kind of fun that maybe they had when they were young.’ In presenting himself as a modern liberal, he ignored the certainty that when her parents had been young, the rules of behaviour might have been lax for a son, but certainly had not been so for a daughter. ‘At a guess, you and your boyfriend found somewhere nice and quiet to be on your own?’
She nodded.
‘Near Son Fuyell?’
She nodded again.
‘Where exactly?’
‘There are some trees just inside the entrance…’ She stopped.
‘I remember them; a small copse of pines.’
‘Well … There’s a bit of a clearing just inside them which is big enough for a car. Me and Francisco often … sometimes go there to … to listen to the nightingales.’
He managed not to smile.
‘Nothing ever happens.’
‘When you parked amongst the pines, was it dark?’
‘Not really, because of the moon.’
‘But it would have been but for the moon?’
The question puzzled her until he rephrased it. She agreed it had been after dark.
‘How long were you there before you saw this other car?’
‘A bit of time.’
‘You couldn’t be more definite?’
She shook her head.
‘What made you notice it?’
‘I thought maybe it was the señor and was kind of worried he might notice us. Only he couldn’t have. And anyway, his car’s a cabriolet and he always has the top down. Another thing, it was going so fast. Francisco said it was like the driver didn’t care what happened to the car. I mean, that track isn’t exactly smooth.’
‘Can you say what kind it was?’
‘I don’t know one from another, not like Francisco. If he wins the lottery, he’s going to buy a BMW and take me everywhere in it.’
‘It seems you were able to see the car pretty clearly, but how’s that when you’d driven into the clearing and must have been facing the wrong way?’
There was a long silence during which her face reddened.
‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘it was a little cramped in the car, so you moved out of it?’
‘We just sat. Nothing happened.’
He thought it more likely that the nightingales had been singing loudly.