Olura

by Geoffrey Household

  I started off to tell him that Olura was still under suspicion. He interrupted me to say he knew she was and, more than that, that she was innocent.

  ‘Can anyone help me to prove it?’ I appealed to him.

  ‘Not in a court,’ he said. ‘Not any of us! We don’t want to spend the rest of the year being talked at by a lot of police. When you were having a good time up and down the banks of the estuary, did you ever notice the María de Urquijo?’

  I said that of course I did. She was the fishing launch just settling on the sand when I first waded across the river with Olura.

  ‘Well, Allarte is your man. Skipper Allarte. I’ll ask him to talk to you. He’ll do it for me because his grandmother used to sell sardines in Santurce right where the public piss-house is now.’

  Since Echeverría’s own ancestors did not come from Santurce, I could not interpret this reference to some obscure obligation. In the interests of scholarship I ought to have asked. It is always profitable to explore the inter-relationships between the Basques.

  ‘Or if he won’t,’ Echeverría went on, ‘he’ll have to walk to Bilbao the next time he has a good catch and wants to buy himself a whore. On a day like this the María de Urquijo will have gone out on the morning tide and Allarte will come into Lequietio with his catch at dawn tomorrow. I’ll bring him here to meet you at eleven. He likes a free ride.’

  I pressed money on him and had to show my well-stuffed wallet before he would take his costs and a little profit. Just for Allarte’s morning thirst, he said. He did not approve of my spending another night in the open. He protested that my appearance was an insult to Vizcaya, and if I wanted to look like a decent person walking between villages it was time I had a shave. He knew a widow not far off who would put me up and be glad of anything I chose to give her except twins.

  A typical bit of Echeverría’s protective coarseness! When he drove me to his widow—a sweet, tragic woman in her forties, trying single-handed to run two children and a remote hill-top small holding—I heard him assure her that I was a good Basque and a man of honour and she had nothing to fear from me. She would not allow me to pay as much as I wanted, so for two hours I swung a mattock in the corn patch.

  I said good-bye to her and her terraces with gratitude. To cultivate, like our far ancestors, a hill top where the soft breeze from the sea dampens and rustles the leaves of the growing food is the next best way of living to my own. If there is the expected end to this business and never again any Olura, that is what I shall do when I regain my liberty.

  Allarte and Echeverría were at the café fairly punctually. The skipper and I knew each other well by sight but had done little more than exchange greetings. I had been too occupied to frequent the bar and the foreshore; and Olura, as a reluctant observer, found nothing attractive in Basque fishermen, who were altogether too coarse and noisy for her. She should have seen them in winter when they endured poverty, often serious, with dignified patience.

  Allarte was a big man in blue jeans, with an extravagant boina on his straight black hair and a large, almost circular face. He overwhelmed me with cordiality and unnecessary compliments, but seemed very shy at coming to the point. Echeverría had to help him.

  ‘Go on, Allarte!’ he said. ‘Ardower has his interests, but he is not a curate in charge of a Sunday School.’

  ‘Well, what we do I’d expect of a curate, not grown men,’ Allarte muttered, ‘and it’s a fact that I’m ashamed to talk of it. But what the hell do they expect if they build a palace where there was nothing but a foul bottom and shrimping to amuse the children? It’s reasonable to be curious about how the wealthy live.’

  I agreed that of course it was.

  ‘And a little fun for us to laugh about during the long night,’ Allarte went on. ‘Where’s the harm in that?’

  It turned out that Allarte and his crew of three had been attracted by the lighted windows of the Hostal which they passed whenever they went out on a night tide, bound north or east. They discovered that guests were often careless in drawing their curtains, which was natural enough when the Hostal faced nothing but empty Atlantic and the uninhabitable rock of the Ermita. What they saw was generally a matter for ribaldry, but occasionally they had what Allarte—damn him!—called a stroke of luck. I gathered that Olura’s casual habits had caused them to be late on the fishing grounds for three nights running. Their revolting form of entertainment had been materially assisted by an ancient telescope.

  ‘She was there with a black man,’ Allarte said. ‘We thought at first that … well, you know very well that imaginations runs faster than truth. In fact she was dressed as the foreign women dress for the beach. And if it’s good enough for them it’s good enough for me, and I see no reason why the Council of Vizcaya should send half-wits in peaked caps to patrol the sands.

  ‘For all the black man was doing about it, she might have been the Mother Superior. She was writing and he was writing. Then she got up and opened a door, and you’d have thought she had seen a ghost. She called the black man over, and he saw it too. Mine is a good glass and, though it was hard to hold steady in the swell that was running under us, I could make out their faces as clearly as yours. When a man has travelled as I have, he thinks of many things. If we had all been in the America, I would have said that those two had found a most deadly snake in the room.’

  Allarte and his crew saw Olura pull the curtains. After that, by the light of the sea itself, they could vaguely follow our comings and goings along the balcony. They had not attempted to explain what they saw. Afterwards, however, they put two and two together, and made it their business to find out if the dates fitted.

  ‘I have friends in the police,’ Allarte said. ‘It’s sensible to drop a nice hake on the sods from time to time. So I learned that someone had tried to kill the black Prime Minister and got himself bumped off instead. About that I know nothing. But I saw the lady’s face as I see yours. And I tell you that when she saw the corpse—for that’s what she must have seen—she was surprised. And that’s how all Maya knows she is innocent. Because I say so.’

  It did not get us much farther, and I could well understand that Allarte was not likely to go to the police and confess to a launch-load of Peeping Toms when what he had to report would be no proof at all to a magistrate—though good enough for the village.

  ‘You know they arrested a crook called Araña for letting the man into the hotel?’ I asked.

  Yes, he knew that and Araña too. Then had he any idea who had bribed Araña and given him his instructions? It must be someone speaking French and Spanish who was a stranger to Araña and yet familiar enough with the district and the Hostal to choose him.

  ‘My mate told him to try Araña!’ Allarte exclaimed. ‘By God, I thought he wanted fish trays!’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The Breton, Bozec.’

  I think Allarte regretted at once that he had mentioned the name. He had been startled into indiscretion at finding himself unexpectedly involved. To avoid giving any information about Bozec—whose business must have been suspected by some of the inshore fishing fleet—he burst into a long and detailed account of the apparently irrelevant fish trays.

  ‘Plastic they are. Lighter than wood and very practical. The manager of the hotel brings his own when he buys fish at Bermeo or Lequeitio. Well, we don’t like the hotel, you see. It’s a joke, you understand. So when Bozec said he wanted some of the plastic trays, my mate told him to give a few pesetas to Araña who could easily pinch a dozen from the stack outside the kitchen.’

  Clearly Bozec had been briefed by Vigny and then visited Maya to drink with the crew of the María de Urquijo and find out the name of any dishonest employee of the Hostal. The man in a café had been Araña’s invention; it sounded more warm-hearted than to admit he had been approached by a complete stranger in the hotel grounds and bribed then and there to put up a ladder against Olura’s bathroom window.

  Bozec’s visit to Maya must have been
on July 20th, the very day of Mgwana’s arrival, the day that Olura and I so nearly passed each other on the beach. I remember that when she and I were eating prawns on the terrace there was a cheerful banging of bottles and glasses in the bar. I also remember that Spanish was being spoken, whereas I expected to hear Euzkadi. With that sea running, Allarte and his crew had nothing to do but drink and encourage any mischief that was going.

  ‘What did he think of the trays?’ I asked in order to compel Allarte to go on talking.

  ‘Only this morning I asked him if they were practical,’ Allarte answered sulkily. ‘He told me they were, but that he hadn’t managed to collect some from the Hostal because he had no transport of his own.’

  ‘Where did you see him?’

  ‘He is in Lequeito. The propeller gland went, and the main bearings are out of alignment. So the harbourmaster gave him permission to refit. That’s fair enough. He couldn’t make Le Croisic if it blows up again like it’s been doing for the last month.’

  Allarte’s capacity for red Rioja, anchovies and bread was astonishing. When he rolled out to make room for more, I asked Echeverría if the Basque and Breton fishing fleets got on well when they met in the Bay.

  ‘They know more about each other than they would tell to you or me,’ he said.

  ‘Allarte doesn’t go out that far, does he?’

  ‘I’ve known him go to Ireland for lobsters when he was broke. But it’s not out at sea that he met Bozec, if that’s what you are thinking, Ardower. Any of the skippers in Lequeitio would tell Bozec to talk to Allarte of Maya if he wanted information about the hotel.’

  ‘Are the French boats allowed to sell their catch here?’

  ‘No. But the port can’t refuse repairs if the damage is as bad as Allarte says.’

  When Allarte returned, I asked him which storm it was that caught Bozec.

  ‘The blow of July 10th,’ he replied. ‘Came on with only a couple of hours’ warning! The Breton fleet made for the Adour, but Bozec turned back too late. God knows why! He’s a good seaman, and his radio was working.’

  Then I guessed a possible connection with Sauche and Vigny. Why had Bozec carried on for the Spanish coast when the rest of the fleet turned east to take refuge in the mouth of the Adour? To land Vigny, of course! The sudden storm was on July 10th. According to Gonzalez, the police registered Vigny’s arrival on the 11th.

  Allarte and I continued to drink a bit longer. He gave me news of Olura. She had looked so unhappy, her eyes always seeking the river, that Maya had been afraid she would romantically throw herself into it. But now a rich uncle had come out to keep her company, and taken the villa on the headland. A true caballero of the old school, speaking a simple Spanish slowly and correctly. Very courteous, very grave, said Allarte, but with the eyes of a dynamiter. An excellent description.

  I hesitated whether to send her a letter or message by Allarte and decided against it, cursing myself for cruelty to us both. It was better that she should believe I was in goal or—if she had been told of my release—in England. As soon as she knew I was playing detective by ear and instinct within thirty miles of her, she would either make some rash and generous move or start feeling helplessly guilty because I might be rearrested or land myself in some collision with Vigny. Both were risks which I meant to avoid until such time as I had evidence worth putting to Gonzalez.

  When Echeverría had driven Allarte off to Lequeitio, I staggered up the nearest hill for a couple of hours’ sleep in the narrow shade of a loose-stone wall. After waking up I found a stream—never far off in that glorious country—and refreshed myself by a bath as well as by the thought that the water almost certainly ran past Olura into the sea. I took Echeverría’s advice and shaved. There was enough moustache to be worth dyeing—a mere darkness, but making my upper lip look a bit shorter.

  Then I started off for Lequeitio, keeping so far as possible to by-roads and field tracks. It was an agitated walk. For an hour and a half of the early evening I was accompanied by a man of about my own age whom, once met, I could not lose. He seemed to fall in naturally with my intention of reaching the coast by avoiding main roads.

  I told him that I was going to Lequeitio, where a lot of new apartment houses were being built, to see if I could get a job with a contractor—a story which was quite good enough when chatting to a passer-by, but invited comment from any more permanent companion on why the devil I didn’t take a bus. He said that he was a fisherman, which I was sure he was not. So we continued on our cautious way, each well aware that the other did not wish for too close examination by any public authority.

  Crossing the coastal range, we were forced on to a secondary road. As we began the descent we saw a Civil Guard on a motor-cycle, one bend below us, coming up. My companion dived into the scrub at the side of the road like a startled rabbit. After a moment’s hesitation I did the same, for I should be instantly in trouble if asked for my papers. I was too late to avoid observation, but fortunately the Guardia had no chance to see my face.

  He dismounted smartly and ordered the silence to halt. As it didn’t answer, he strode towards a little ridge which commanded the inadequate cover where we were half hidden, crushing the heather with severity and unslinging from his back a complicated bit of American lethal machinery, less respectable for a servant of state than the old carbine and possibly less practical, but a lot more terrifying to the public, including me.

  My companion, more experienced than I, saw what was going to happen and started to dodge silently from bush to bush before it was too late. I remained crouched in a wretchedly shallow, dry arroyo, dithering with indecision. When I dared to raise my head, old Spain was gallantly intent on its duty to smell out the disaffected, while new Spain, in the form of a motor-cycle, glittered a few yards away by the roadside.

  I did not wait to explore unfamiliar controls. I just hurtled down the road in neutral, getting a fair start before the Guardia heard me at all. As I reappeared on the bend below, my impertinence was too much for his patience and he gave me a squirt from his undignified weapon. Nobody in my quiet life had ever shot at me before. The experience was not so alarming as I should have anticipated. One has always, I suppose, something else to think about. In my case it was whether or not I was going to skid on the loose gravel of the verge at the pace I was taking the corners.

  I left the machine for its owner at the bottom of the hill and vanished again into country lanes. There were several local inhabitants in the middle distance, but, after all, they could not know it was not my motor-cycle. I hoped that in any case the outrage would be ascribed to my shady companion. It was quite likely that the Guardia was not aware that there were two of us.

  All this meant another hungry night in the open. Since somebody looking rather like me at a distance was wanted by the police, I had to avoid villages and approach Lequeitio with extreme care. The little port, set in a bowl of the hills, could only be entered by three roads, easy to control. By waiting for low tide I found a fourth, scrambling over the rocky foreshore to the beach and then walking inoffensively along it to the harbour.

  I enjoyed a huge late lunch in a quayside tavern, where nobody used Spanish and I was just an insignificant part of the general noise. The Lequeitio fleet was out. The tall, brown houses with their splendidly timbered glassed balconies stared down on a harbour fairly empty except for the floating mess which fishermen always manage to leave on any smooth and enclosed piece of water. I was conscious of too many unseen eyes for my comfort—of bored proprietors and clerks looking out from the dark entrances of the warehouses, taverns and chandler’s shops beneath the houses, of unseen women behind the panes of the miradores.

  I walked along the massive paving of the quay and had not far to look for the Breton. Her name was the Phare de Kerdonis, registered at Le Croisic. She was tied up alongside the breakwater with a local boat, also under repair, between her and the fishmarket. On her starboard side was a small launch, about the size of Allarte’s, called
the Isaura, her skipper busy with the maintenance of his fixed rods and lines.

  Out on the breakwater beyond the houses, where there were no casual idlers, I felt naked and conspicuous. I had not even any determined plan. These things are so much easier for a cop; he can either employ some slimy individual to buy drinks for his suspect until the man gives himself away, or charge right in and detain him. What I wanted to find out was whether Captain Bozec knew Vigny. I was ninety per cent certain that he did, but conjecture was not enough. And what was the close association between the two? Close it had to be, for when Vigny after that third brandy which I had invented for him was wondering whom he could get at a moment’s notice to prepare the way for Livetti, the inspired answer was Bozec.

  Blue flashes of welding lit up the engine-room hatch, on the edge of which an obvious Frenchman was sitting with his legs hanging down. Unlike the Basque fishing captains, he wore a peaked cap. Since he looked authoritative, I took a chance that he was Bozec.

  ‘Have you been here long, captain?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve been here six weeks,’ he answered irritably. ‘And in any other hole of this coast it would be one.’

  He spoke idiomatic Spanish with hardly any accent. That explained one thing which had been bothering me: why Araña, who by and large had told the truth, had never said that the man who did business with him was a foreigner.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘The trouble is a son of a bitch of an engineer who can’t learn to keep the screw from racing when we’re halfway up to heaven.’

  ‘There were some nasty blows last month,’ I said.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked abruptly—for it was obvious that I did not know what all Lequeitio did.