The Blue Afternoon

WEDNESDAY, 3RD MAY

My first view of the city was a solitary one. Carriscant said he was feeling unwell and stayed below as the SS Herzog steamed slowly up the Tagus towards the docks. There was a fine rain falling and the sky was full of heavy mouse-grey clouds. The buildings of the city rose up from the dull sheen of the estuary stacked on their undulating hills, hunched and nondescript in the murky crepuscular light, the stepped facades and rooftops punctuated here and there by a spire or cupola, the baroque dome of a church or the squared teeth of a castellated rampart.

We docked opposite a building that said Posta do Desin-faccao and the gangplank was lowered. I saw customs sheds and warehouses, railway lines, and along the north shore a great fritter of ships. Then the vast sweep of water and the blurry green slopes rising to the south. A placid traffic of boats-ferries and tugs, launches and fishing boats-crisscrossed the scene. In the air the periodic curse of gulls and the shouts of the stevedores. A smell of oil, of smoke and underlying that something fresh and briny, the presence of the great ocean lying beyond these encircling hills.

Carriscant joined, me on deck. He did look somewhat pasty-faced, I had to admit, and he had shaved himself badly, leaving a furze of grey bristles under his left ear.

'I'm glad it's raining,' he said, thoughtfully, after he had stared at the view for a while.

'Why? It's May and we're in Europe.'

'It suits my mood. Sun and blue skies would have been wrong, I'd have hated that.'

I didn't remonstrate. We leaned on the rail waiting to be summoned for customs, staring out at the damp creams and ochres, the pinks and pale yellows of the terraced buildings, their terracotta roofs turned mauve and brown by the rain.

'To think she's out there, somewhere,' he said, not looking at me.

'I hope you're right. We've come a long way.'

'You've got to help me, Kay,' he said, petulantly. 'I don't need sarcasm, I need help.' He patted my hand on the rail. 'Yours.'

Carriscant, Carriscant. What should I call him, this baffling new presence in my life? My father?… Too uncertain. Or Salvador? Too intimate. The more neutral S. C.? Even after all these days of talk I find my ideas change about him several times an hour. Keep your distance, don't become too involved, watch out for the way he draws you in. Carriscant it shall remain.

We cleared customs quickly as we had little luggage. I had packed two suitcases, having no idea how long I would be away; Carriscant had only one. As we drove in a taxi to our hotel I found myself wondering: what if she has left Lisbon? We were following a trail that was almost ten years old, what if it led us all over Europe? The notion did not perturb me as much as I thought. The fact that I was here was a tribute to my lack of rationality and absence of commonsense; it was a little late to start demanding that logic and prudence be my watchwords now.

Our hotel is the Francfort on the Rua do Santa Justa, middle category, 'a good commercial house' the guidebook says, with a restaurant, and situated some few streets away from the Rossio. We have adjoining rooms on the third floor, quite large and clean with simple functional furniture.

At the end of the corridor is a bathroom. A young man, Joao, who spoke good English, was at reception and most helpful undertaking to secure our identity cards and providing us with the address of a photographer. He had the pale waxy skin of those who work indoors under artificial light and his good features were spoilt by a black tooth in his smile. The elevator was tiny, a small cage of elaborately twisted metal that only just managed to contain the three of us. I stood close behind Joao, his shiny black jacket inches from my eyes. There was a strong smell of camphor coming from him, and in the confined space it set Carriscant off on a sneezing fit that had the small lift rocking.

The trial of Salvador Carriscant was surprisingly short. Accused of the murder of Sieverance and of conspiracy to murder Ward and Braun, he was acquitted of the first charge and found guilty of the second. He was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment and was incarcerated in Bilibid prison. From his cell window he could see in the distance, on a clear day, the fading roof of the nipa barn where Pantaleon Quiroga had built his flying machine.

It had been Bobby's idea to introduce the second charge of conspiracy to murder, convinced as he was that the deaths of all three soldiers were connected. In court, under cross-examination, Bobby's theory emerged. He was sure that Pantaleon had been the murderer, aided and abetted by Carriscant. It was the location of the bodies at key sites of the first day of the war that had led him to the unshakeable conclusion that the motive was political, or driven by some idea of ideological or nationalist vengeance. The case against Carriscant for the murder of Sieverance was harder to establish as there seemed to be no obvious reason why he should have done the deed. The prosecution tried hard to introduce the implication that, owing to the untimely death of his co-conspirator, Quiroga, Carriscant was obliged to finish the matter off himself. The key item of evidence was the discovery in the Sieverance house of a gauze face mask from the San Jeronimo hospital of the sort used for administering anaesthesia. It was also held against him that Carriscant had no alibi for his movements between 4 and 6 a.m., from the time he was seen leaving the hospital to his awakening of Annaliese. His explanation – that he was sitting on his azotea, thinking – was regarded as risible. One other piece of evidence counted against him: a torn-up letter was found in his secretary's waste paper basket which, when fitted together, was found to be to Annaliese, informing her that he was leaving her to start a new life. This was adduced, not very convincingly, by the prosecution, to be a tacit admission of guilt, a sign that the cycle of murders was over and that the perpetrator was about to flee. Carriscant admitted his marriage was in difficulties and that he had written the letter in a moment of despair. Rather than flee the country, he attested that he was on his way to visit his sick old mother in Batangas. Chief of Constabulary Bobby had arrested him just as he was about to rouse his driver and tell him to make the carriage ready for the journey. The idea that, having fought vainly all night to save the life of Mrs Sieverance, he then should follow her husband home to murder him was simply incomprehensible, and unless the prosecution could establish any reason why Salvador Carriscant should have committed such a bizarre act, the defence argued, then the charge was simply not worthy of consideration and should be thrown out.

Carriscant remembered the courtroom with the newly installed electric roof fans that kept breaking down. One minute a veritable breeze would be rustling the weighted papers on the lawyers' desks, the next there would be a sharp crack and a smell of burning and handkerchiefs would be applied to moist brows and slick, collar-chafed necks. A pause would be called while a nervous workman mounted a step-ladder to investigate the recalcitrant machinery. Eventually after seven interruptions in one day the judge called for the fans to be switched off, the windows were thrown as wide as possible and matters continued in the usual sweltering fug.

He remembered Bobby perjuring himself shamelessly in the witness box telling, with phenomenal recall of detail, how he had found the scalpel by the body of the murdered woman – 'a scalpel identified by the defendant himself as coming from his own stores at the San Jeronimo hospital'. He remembered too the daily mutter of speculation and fascinated curiosity that would arise as he entered the courtroom each morning, carried in, he felt, on a foaming susurrus of gossip, the public benches and the gallery packed with the craning, ogling faces of Manila 's expatriate bourgeoisie. The celebrated surgeon, Dr Carriscant, turned conspirator, assassin and clandestine insurrecto… Once, on the journey back to his cell at Bilibid, the police carriage had been obliged to make a detour through the back streets of Santa Cruz where the local indios, when they realised who was held inside, cheered him heartily on his way, children running after the carriage yelling 'Carriscant! Carriscant!' until the prison doors swung closed behind it.

Carriscant's lawyer, a young ilustrado called Felix de la Rama, was a young man of slight build and unimpressive demeanour with a long neck and prominent Adam's apple. Luckily, his voice was unusually deep-some special reverberating capacity in that laryngeal prominence, Carriscant fantasised. His voice emerged from his mouth as a fruity, sagacious baritone giving everything he said a considered, experienced air. Every observation, however inconsequential, seemed to have been brewed in gravitas and authority. It probably made the vital difference, Carriscant reflected. Upon such trifles hang our fates.

De la Rama doggedly hammered away at the implausibilities in the murder charge but in so doing rather neglected to expose the deficiencies in the second alleged offence. As the trial progressed all manner of speculation was introduced as to why Pantaleon Quiroga wanted to kill American enlisted men and the prosecution managed to build a semi-convincing picture of these two eminent surgeons, infected by disappointed insurrecto zeal, trying either to instil terror in the occupying colonial forces or to exact some revenge for the insurgents' defeat. In the end reason and fantasy both emerged triumphant. The jury (eight Americans, a Chinese and three mestizos) threw out the murder charge and then, almost by default, found Carriscant guilty of the lesser crime. The judge (Judge Charles K. Weller) took the opportunity of handing down an exemplary sentence.

De la Rama had been particularly effective when it came to diminishing the damage done by the discovery of the gauze mask. He did not deny that it might well have been brought to the Sieverance house by Carriscant himself- more than likely, in fact, as the defendant had been a regular visitor during Mrs Sieverance's convalescence. Furthermore, it had to be taken into account that Nurse Aslinger had been living in the same abode for several weeks; the piece of gauze was a very common medical item, and no one could say with any accuracy when it might have been introduced into the household.

Carriscant, or so he told me, sat impassively through the farcical proceedings simply counting the days off as they went by. He could not believe his luck that, in the huge fuss and scandal of his arrest and trial, Delphine Sieverance's 'death' had been virtually forgotten. What had happened was this: with Jepson Sieverance dead no one thought to claim or make arrangements for the coffined body lying in the San Jeronimo morgue. It was not until four days after Carriscant's arrest that Delphine's friend Mrs Oliver suddenly remembered and decided that someone should arrange a funeral. This was done discreetly and with great speed as the warm and humid weather had significantly accelerated the decomposition of the body. The funeral took place the next day and the body was buried at the Paco cemetery in a small ceremony attended by a few friends and, as a mark of respect, Mrs William Taft. Sieverance's body was embalmed and shipped home to his family where he was buried with full military honours.

Carriscant's explanation of this oversight was that it was due to Bobby's obsession. He was so convinced that Pantaleon Quiroga was the murderer of Ward and Braun that the only explanation of Sieverance's killing was that it had to have been carried out by an accomplice, and Salvador Carriscant regrettably fitted that bill. The last person seen with Sieverance had been Carriscant-talking outside the San Jeronimo. The gauze mask, the absence of an alibi and, to Bobby's mind, recollections of the testimony of the old man who claimed to have seen Carriscant out and about on the night of the Braun murder were sufficient to make the arrest. Any other route of investigation-such as the last murder not being connected to the first two-was never followed up. The death in premature childbirth of Delphine Sieverance and the murder of her husband by rebels was seen by polite Manila society as a ghastly double tragedy, a potent illustration of the white man's burden, and no-one sought to establish any connection that might have existed between the two. So Carriscant sat in court silent and unforthcoming, knowing exactly who was responsible for the death of Colonel Jepson Sieverance (although baffled as to the motive), and knowing too that any attempt to protest or establish his own innocence would have terrible consequences. As innuendo and circumstance, blustering argument and gimcrack reasoning slowly wound a skein of guilt about him so, as each day and week passed by, was the guilty party's freedom more assured. And that freedom became absolute the day he was sentenced and the case was effectively closed.

Carriscant spent eight years behind the grey walls of Bilibid prison before he was transferred to the island of Guam, to a prison camp for former unrepentant insurrectos (battles were still being waged in the hills of Mindanao as late as 1913) run by the US military. In 1919, after serving sixteen years of his sentence he was paroled and went to live in Capiz, on Panay island, where he opened a small restaurant in the main square of that pretty provincial town. He was still obliged to report to the authorities in Iloilo once a month until the full term of his sentence was up. He never returned to Manila and lived quietly and forgotten in Capiz where his restaurant, ' La Esperanza', earned him a decent living. It was only in 1935 when he bought the house of a former Portuguese manager of the sugar refinery there, and came across a stack of old illustrated magazines through which he idly leafed, that he ever thought about moving.

I asked Carriscant how he had survived his sixteen years of incarceration. 'Two things, really,' he said, 'though I have to tell you conditions were not so tough, especially on Guam. It was more like a farm there, and I ended up running the camp's kitchens.' The first was the ever-sustaining knowledge that Delphine at least was free, that she had escaped, and somewhere was leading the new life that they had both planned. 'I was the only person in the world who knew she was not buried in Paco cemetery. A big secret, that, a secret worth keeping. I was consoled by it. As long as I kept the secret she was safe. It helped to know that.'

'What was the second thing?'

'You.'

Love is not a feeling. It does not belong to that category of bodily experience which would include, for instance, pain. Love and pain are not the same at all. Love is put to the test – pain is not. You do not say of pain, as you do of love, 'That was not true pain, or it would not have disappeared so quickly.'

It was Udo Leys who told Carriscant about Annaliese's pregnancy. Udo died in 1905 and in the years up to his death he was Carriscant's only visitor in Bilibid. It was a month after the verdict that he broke the news that Annaliese was leaving the Philippines.

'She's going back to Germany,' Udo told him, morosely. 'I tell her no but she says she can't live here. The shame, the scandal. Everyone knows her as the woman married to the murderer.'

'But I wasn't found guilty of murder.'

' Salvador, I have to tell you, everyone talks as if you did it.'

'Jesus Christ… Anyway, I'm sorry about Annaliese, I knew it would be hard on her.' He thought for a while. 'I'd like to see her before she goes.'

'Ah, Salvador, she'll never see you. Never again, she say. She's even given up her job with the bishop. She stays indoors, she can't face anyone.'

'Did you give her my last letter?'

'She tear it up, before my eyes. She won't see you.'

'Poor Annaliese… I should've thought how difficult it would be for her to stay here.'

'Listen, it's not so easy for me,' Udo protested equably. 'Everybody talks about it, everybody wonders how and why, why were those men selected as victims… A cause celebre, Salvador. They'll be talking about it for years.'

'I didn't do it, Udo. I didn't do anything. I'm an innocent man.'

'Of course you are. I know that. But you'll never stop people talking.' He smiled apologetically. 'Anyway, it'll be better for the child to grow up away from this atmosphere.'

'What child?'

Udo frowned. 'Didn't Annaliese write to you? She's pregnant.'

We dined in the hotel: a mutton stew which I disliked but which Carriscant declared was among the finest he had ever tasted.

'Mutton is a coarse fibrous meat with a strong taste. This dish is not pretending to be anything else. Garlic, potatoes, carrots and cabbage, what more could you ask for?' Back on dry land his appetite had returned. The dessert was a dense flat triangle of cake, a kind of heavy sponge, served with syrup from a green and gold can. The clientele were all smartly dressed, the dining tables covered with clean linen, the silverware much used but well shined.

'I like this hotel,' Carriscant said, spooning more syrup. 'I could live here.'

Adulthood. When the prospect of physical or sensual excess is no longer enticing. Is this why I feel an adult? Is this why I feel so old beside Salvador Carriscant?

THURSDAY, 4 MAY

I sit at the pine table in my room and stare out at the street with the trams going by with a clatter and fizz. Their approach is announced by a singing of the electric wires, a kind of ghostly monotone whistle. A weak sun is shining today and new fragile green leaves flutter bravely in the cool breeze that blows off the estuary.

So: S.C.'s version goes like this. During the false period of reconciliation with Annaliese they made love. He only specified one occasion, when she came into his study, but he did say he 'reoccupied the marital bed'. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the event recurred. Annaliese became pregnant but probably only became aware of her condition after the arrest and trial. She never saw him again after he was arrested. She refused to attend the trial or visit him in prison after she was made aware of the unsent farewell letter. Then she quit Manila sometime towards the end of 1903 for German New Guinea. So let us say the child was conceived in early May 1903… It would have been born in January 1904. My date of birth is 9 January 1904.

My head fills with clamouring questions when I try to come to terms with these facts. How did she end up in German New Guinea? Carriscant said Udo Leys told him she was returning to Germany… How did she meet Hugh Paget? Was she married to him by the time I was born, or did he marry her afterwards and adopt the baby girl as his own?… The thought comes to me that Hugh Paget might be merely a convenient fiction. An old photograph of a man of the cloth, found somewhere. A handy sad story to relate to a kind fellow like Rudolf Fischer; a neat explanation for the presence of a baby daughter. My mother is no fool. Widow's weeds hide a great deal…

Hugh Paget. My English father.

Question: How did Carriscant know my name? How did he know to come looking for me in Los Angeles?

We went out to buy Carriscant a new suit – his idea. We found a tailor's on the Rua Conceicao and Carriscant bought a three-piece suit off the peg. It was a dark navy blue with a thin red and white chalkstripe, a double-breasted coat and a vest with small lapels. With it we purchased a cream soft-collared shirt and a maroon tie. The trousers had to be taken up an inch or so, which they did on the premises while we waited. He looked well in it: a fit, boxy, broad-shouldered older man, and the cream shirt set off the olive tones in his skin. And all of a sudden I see the young surgeon in Manila -confident, gifted, and so very sure of himself. Carriscant celebrates by having a haircut and a professional shave. I stand outside the barber's and watch the thick suds applied to his face, see the poised careful scraping as the swathes of smooth skin are exposed. Carriscant studies himself in the mirror, his fingers on his chin, pulling and pushing, testing the grain.

He is dressing for someone-not me-and intends to look his best.

In the afternoon we go to an annexe of the US legation, a new building of tawny stone, on the Rua do Alecrim, where we had an appointment with a Mr Shelburne Dillingham, the second secretary. The envoy himself, a Mr James Marion Minnigarde, was visiting the consulate at Oporto. Also he was a recent appointment; we needed to talk to someone who had been in Lisbon for some years, who would at least be familiar with the legation's business in the 1920s.

Mr Dillingham was a serious young man with a pronounced overbite which he tried to disguise by pushing his bottom lip out and up to cover his protruding top teeth, a trick which had the effect of making him look oddly pugnacious. But whenever he talked, or smiled, the old overbite reestablished itself until he remembered his trick again. I became so fascinated with this labial manoeuvre that I found I was paying scant attention to his words. I concentrated once again.

' – I'm pretty sure that the Aishlie cup lapsed in 1930 or 1931,' he was saying. He smiled at me, toothily. 'I've only been here three years.'

Carriscant pushed his photograph across the desk. 'This is the woman we are interested in. She was the wife of an embassy official here, I'm sure.'

Dillingham looked attentively at the picture. 'Very elegant lady,' he said. 'What age would she be there?'

'Early fifties.'

'Let me see.' He went to his bookshelf and drew out a slim navy blue book from a row of identically bound volumes. On the cover was a gold seal and lettering that read: Department of State, Foreign Service List, 1927. He flicked through the pages.

'The envoy in 1927 was Warrick Aishlie and we know that the lady in question is not Mrs Aishlie… The only other diplomats of an age to have a wife in her fifties are…'

He consulted the list. 'Hmm. Mr Parker Gade, vice consul in Funchal, and Commander Mason Shoemaker, the naval attache for air.' He made an impressed noise. 'That was forward looking for us in 1927. Now,' he reached for the 1936 service list, 'let's see where they are today.'

'Naval commander?' Carriscant said, drawing the photo back. 'Could that be him in the picture?'

'I couldn't tell you, sir,' Dillingham said as he checked the index. 'No reference. Both of these gentlemen appear to have retired from the service. Or they're deceased.' He made an unhappy face. 'I could cable the State Department, but I'm fairly sure they wouldn't give out any personal information.'

Carriscant suddenly looked glum and unhappy, shifting uncertainly in his seat, his fingers tugging at the collar of his new shirt, and I felt sorry for him, his hopes raised and dashed so swiftly.

'Isn't there anyone here in the legation who was here in 1927?' I asked. 'There must be some member of staff who goes back that far.'

'Good point,' Dillingham said, throwing me an admiring glance. 'Please excuse me one moment.'

Carriscant stood up and went to the window to look down on the little courtyard outside. I joined him. Some small scruffy pigeons pecked around the base of a lime tree, pecking in a dilatory and routine manner at the sparse blades of grass, as if the search for nourishment itself was sufficient to satisfy their hunger.

'If she did marry this naval commander she could be anywhere,' I said gently.

'No,' Carriscant said with complete confidence. 'She's here, I'm certain of it.'

I turned away, exasperated. He had all the doggedness of a Flat-Earther. These people had to find out the hard way.

Dillingham returned with an elderly Portuguese man in a black suit. He had grey hair combed brutally back from his forehead and held in place with some fearsomely adhesive grease or potion. He wore small round tortoise-shell glasses and a neatly trimmed toothbrush moustache dyed a disconcerting shade of coppery brown.

'Senhor Liceu,' Dillingham said, presenting him. 'Our esteemed chancery clerk. Been here for ever.'

Senhor Liceu shook hands with us, inclining his trunk forward at a slight angle each time. Carriscant showed him the photograph and asked if he could identify Commander Shoemaker.

He did so at once. 'That's Commander Shoemaker,' he said. 'A good likeness.' His English was excellent.

Carriscant pointed to Delphine. 'And is that Mrs Shoemaker?'

Liceu tried not to smile at some memory. 'No, sir, there was no Mrs Shoemaker. The commander was a confirmed bachelor.'

'Do you recognise that lady?'

'No, I'm afraid not. I was there that day, I remember it well. I was a great admirer of Senhorita Barrera.' He gave a sad smile. 'I think I only had eyes for her. This lady was probably Commander Shoemaker's guest. Or Mr Aishlie's.' Despair was creeping back into Carriscant's face. 'Could this lady have been French?' Liceu said, frowning. 'I have some recollection of a very elegant French lady at one of the receptions.'

'I don't think so.' Carriscant shrugged. 'Unless she married a Frenchman.'

'I'll ask some of the other staff,' Liceu volunteered. 'Perhaps someone will remember. It was a great day for the legation. Most memorable. There may be others with better recall than I.'

We thanked them both and left the place somewhat cast down. We walked down the front steps slowly. Evening was coming on and the streetlamps were lit. In the sky above were a few pink-touched clouds. A taxi pulled up and a young man with bad acne descended and spent some time searching his pockets for change while the taxi ticked patiently at the kerb. I felt Carriscant's depression settle round my shoulders like a shawl. I had to say something.

'How does it go? "At the violet hour, something something, like a taxi throbbing at the door"… No, "the human engine, like a taxi throbbing at the door".'

'What on earth are you talking about?' Carriscant rather snapped at me.

'Just a line of poetry. Came to mind. "At the violet hour, etcetera".' I pointed up at the rose-flushed evening sky. 'It's nothing important. Just the conjunction of the light effect and that taxi. Ignore it.'

He was staring at me, a slow smile widening his face. 'At the violet hour,' he said. 'Don't you see?'

'What? No, I don't.'

'Violets.'

FRIDAY, 5 MAY

We spent the morning walking round the Baixa going from sweetshop to sweetshop looking for one that sold crystallised violets. Out of six confeiteiros we found only one with a stock of the sweets. We returned with Joao from the hotel to help us translate.

'They sell many types of sweets,' Joao said needlessly as we looked round the small shop. It was narrow and dark and looked more like an apothecary's with its crammed shelves of ornate glass bottles, some of them tinted green and blue. 'But they have no regular order for the violets. They do not despatch them to special clients.'

'What about regular customers?'

Joao conferred with the bemused couple who ran the shop. Yes, they did have some regular customers. They peered curiously at Carriscant's picture. No, they didn't recognise the woman.

Undeterred, Carriscant secured the name of the wholesaler who supplied them with the sweets; from him he would obtain a list of other stockists in the city, he explained.

I was beginning to grow a little worried. If ever there was an example of clutching at straws… But Carriscant persisted, extracting a promise from them that they would ask anyone who bought the sweets to provide their name and address. They would try, they said, obviously affected by the earnestness of Carriscant's demand, but they warned that not everyone would be prepared to divulge that information.

We found a small cafe nearby, the Cafe Adamastor, and stopped there for refreshment. It was little more than a smoke-darkened room with a long zinc-topped bar running the length of the rear wall with a shelf above ranged with small dumpy barrels, with spigots attached, labelled Moscatel, Clarete, Ginebra. Fixed to the ceiling was a small fan mounted vertically on the end of a hanging pole so that it resembled a propeller shaft on an outboard motor. This revolved slowly round and round, ensuring that the cigarette smoke reached every corner of the room.

We sat at a round marble-topped table. I ordered a vinho verde, Carriscant a brandy. I sipped eagerly at my cold wine, it tasted fresh and young, like crushed grass. I took out my cigarettes.

'I don't think you should do that, Kay.'

'Do what?'

'Smoke.'

'Everyone else is, why not me, for heaven's sake?'

'None of the women are… I have a feeling it's not the done thing.'

'Well, I shall blaze a trail,' I said, defiantly setting fire to my Picayune. Carriscant's instincts were correct, however: I became the object of fascinated stares and whispered conversations for a minute or two.

'We've made a real start,' Carriscant said, with genuine enthusiasm, 'a real start. I'll look into that shop daily. I'll find out others in the city. We should begin to build up a list of names.'

I felt indescribably weary at the prospect of seeking out every crystallised violets lover in Lisbon.

'Dr Carriscant, you really can't-'

'How many times have I told you, Kay? I wish you'd call me Father.'

'It's hard for me, you know that.'

'I don't see why. At least " Salvador ", then. We're friends, Kay, good chums, you and I. I don't want to feel that I'm here on sufferance. I'll have another brandy, I think. What about you?'

SATURDAY, 6 MAY

We found two more sweetshops which stocked crystallised violets, one a tobacconist on the Praca do Commercio, the other in Biarro Alto. Unable to make our complicated requests understood we resolved to return later with Joao.

I prevailed upon Carriscant to attempt another method of finding Delphine. I suggested we obtain an enlargement of the photograph and place an advertisement in a newspaper, asking anyone who recognised Delphine to contact us at the Commercio. We could even offer a reward, I suggested. He thought this was a fine idea, so we ended our day with a visit to the photographer's studio where we had had our photographs taken for our identity cards and where the enlargement was duly made.

When we returned to the hotel there was a note from the US legation, from Senhor Liceu, beautifully written in exquisite copperplate. A colleague in the office thought that the woman who had been with the guests of honour on the day of the inaugural Aishlie cup was not French but Portuguese. He had spoken to her and recalled her name as Senhora Lopes do Livio. 'A melodious appellation,' Liceu had added, 'which is why it stayed in his head.' This fact was confirmed when they found the official visitors' book for the day. But there was no address by the signature.

'Portuguese?' Carriscant said. 'There must be some mistake. '

According to Joao there were three Lopes do Livios in the Lisbon telephone directory. One was a beautician's, one was at an address in the Alfama – 'I don't think a lady of distinction would live there,' Joao averred – the third was in a respectable part of town near the jardim botanico. We decided to investigate in the morning.

We sauntered out arm in arm for a digestive after our meal that evening, heading for the Cafe Martinho, situated between the station and the National Theatre on the Rossio. We walked through the dimly lit streets into the enormous square, still loud with trams and taxis, the shouts of lottery-ticket vendors and the calls of shoeshine boys, with groups of people strolling about the fountains and the monument, the cafe windows under their faded awnings glowing orange, and, beyond the classic bulk of the theatre, rose the city on one of its higher hills, a loose heap of spangling lights in the luminous dark. For the first time I experienced the authentic thrill of travel, that strangeness of displacement, as we strolled, anonymous foreigners in this hospitable, scruffy city, amongst its idling denizens, their laughter and their chatter falling on our uncomprehending ears. I was in Europe, I remembered, albeit on its very western edge, and I should draw some sustenance from this trip I was paying for – and, my God, did I need it – and stop behaving like the tolerant chaperone of a testy and eccentric old man. But the testy and eccentric old man, I could see, was enjoying himself too as he strode briskly across the square, proud in his new suit, towards the blurry warmth of the Martinho, from whose open doors a smell of roasting coffee wafted.

The Martinho was a grandly capacious place. A large room with solid pillars, encrusted cornices and tall gilt mirrors. It was filled with neat ranks of simple wooden tables with marble tops, laid out with a schoolroom precision in immaculate rows. Drooping lights with frosted glass shades sprouted like wilting tulips from the central pillars sending out a diffuse yellow light. All the waiters were stout middle-aged men with long white aprons and generous moustaches. The place was crowded, full of men who did not remove their hats and who sat, most oddly I thought, with one hand resting on their walking sticks and canes as they drank and chatted, as if at any moment they were about to spring to their feet and stride off into the night.

We found a table for two at one side of the room, beneath a baroquely carved mirror whose sides were formed by two golden caryatids, bare breasted pubescent beauties emerging from a tangle of lianas and tropical fruits. We ordered coffee, with a brandy for Carriscant, and sat back to survey the scene.

'This is the life,' Carriscant said, upending his brandy into his coffee cup. He looked at me slyly: 'You won't find anything like this in Los Angeles.'

'Which is why one travels,' I said a little frostily, irritated by his patronising manner. 'How boring it would be if every new place merely reproduced your home town. Someone from Lisbon doesn't go to Los Angeles looking for a Cafe Martinho.'

'He'd be pleased to find one, however,' Carriscant said in a self-satisfied way.

A silence fell as I decided not to prolong this discussion.

'How did you know,' I said abruptly, irritated with him for souring the excitement and pleasure I had experienced crossing the Rossio, 'that I lived in Los Angeles? How did you know Mother had gone to live there?'

My tone took him aback and he looked startled. 'Udo told me,' he said. 'Annaliese used to write to him once a month until he died.' He paused, remembering. 'The bishop annulled our marriage very promptly. Then Udo told me she had married an American called Fischer, a coir importer, from Los Angeles. When I got there it wasn't hard to track him down. Or you.'

'What about Hugh Paget?'

'I know nothing about any Hugh Paget.'

I felt the weight of my dissatisfactions descend on me, a sensation of living a personal history concocted of half truths and opportune fictions. Now other uncertainties and key ambiguities of Carriscant's story rose up to nag at me, making me fretful and ill at ease. In many ways Carriscant had been as honest and as unsparing as anyone I could imagine. He seemed to have held nothing back, providing me with details and intimacies I would never have asked for myself. But in the end it was his story and he was free to emphasise and ignore what he wished, to select and choose, shape and redirect…

I sipped my coffee, looking at him over the rim of the cup as his quick eyes scanned the busy room. He turned to meet my gaze and smiled it me, raising his cup in salute. He was in a good mood.

'Thanks for everything, Kay, I think tomorrow we-'

'Who killed Ward and Braun?'

The question blurted from me, unplanned, spontaneous, as my mind sifted through the tale he'd told me. Carriscant didn't flinch: he thought about it, tugged at an earlobe, and set his cup down in its saucer without a rattle. He shrugged.

'Your guess is as good as mine… Who do you think? I told you everything I know.'

'So you say. But that can't be true. There must be things you forgot, or didn't think were relevant.'

'Of course.' To my vague surprise I seemed to sense a pleasure in him now, as he settled back in his chair, a kind of mischievous delight at the line my questioning was taking. 'Look, I told you the story you asked me to tell -about me and Delphine – why we were making this trip. But who knows?' He paused, a tolerant smile on his lips. 'You may find the answer to other questions. Everything's there if you know where to find it.'

This intrigued me. 'What? You mean like clues?'

'Yes and no. It applies to both of us. I'm sure that m telling you what happened there are connections I haven't spotted. Got to be. Maybe we can force them out. Two heads are better than one, and all that.'

This seemed to me to be an oblique challenge. I wished I had my notes with me, but, as I began to reflect, certain hints, certain omissions began to reveal themselves.

'Think, Kay, think hard. What've I forgotten? Now you know the whole story and can look back, what seems significant?'

I thought for a while before I came across something. A completely innocuous remark early on, the sort of casual parenthesis that at the time seems quite unremarkable.

I looked at him closely. 'You said at one stage that you had seen Sieverance before. Before you met him that day in the Ayuntamiento.'

He frowned and looked up at the ceiling. 'No I didn't. I said I wondered if we had met before. He reminded me of someone.'

'Who?'

'It's a long story. It happened a good while before I met Delphine. I don't know if it has any bearing on all this.'

'Why don't I be the judge of that?'

'All right.' He looked at me shrewdly, and then signalled to the waiter to renew our coffees. I ordered a glass of port for myself. When in Rome…

'You remember when I visited my mother in San Teodoro… I hadn't seen her for some time, not since my last visit, which had been, I think, in February 1902. I went to her because I was worried about what was happening in the southern provinces, in South Luzon. The war was still going on. After Balangiga the fighting-'

'What's Balangiga?'

'It's a place. Forty-eight American soldiers were massacred there, on the island of Samar, by insurrectos. General Smith issued an order that all Filipinos capable of carrying arms who did not surrender were to be shot.' Carriscant gave a tired smile. 'General Smith worked on the assumption that any male over the age of ten was capable of carrying arms.' He spread his hands. 'It all got out of control. People assumed once Aguinaldo had been captured the war was virtually over. Not at all. The early months of 1902 were a bad time, the worst in some ways. Not for us in Manila, of course, but in South Luzon – in Cavite, Batangas, Tabayas -there was a lot of fighting. There was a fine insurrecto general there, Esteban Elpidio-'

'Pantaleon's uncle.'

'Yes. There was a punitive expedition sent out, led by a young general, Franklin Bell. People were concentrated in military zones, all food outside these zones was destroyed. Whenever an American soldier was killed a Filipino prisoner was chosen by lot and executed. When they finally caught Elpidio in April the war was effectively over, but in February there were still many problems…'

So Carriscant told me about the trip he made south to visit his mother. He had gone in his carriage with supplies of food, driven by Constancio. The journey down to Los Banos on Laguna de Bay was quiet. When they turned inland to San Teodoro they entered one of the areas under military control where the curfew was enforced. They reached the village before nightfall and Carriscant was safely in his mother's house by the time the curfew fell at 8.

The next morning however none of the household servants arrived and his mother, alarmed, asked him to return to the village to investigate. She was particularly concerned because her major-domo, Flaviano, was infallible. And if he had been ill his son, Ortega, would have come to the house with the news.

San Teodoro was completely deserted when Carriscant arrived there with Constancio. Cooking fires had been lit for breakfast and two or three market stalls had been set out beneath the old acacia tree in the square, but apart from hens and nosing pie dogs, there was no sign of the inhabitants.

Then they found an old lady hiding behind the wooden church. She told them that the Americanos had come at first light and had herded together everyone in the village – men, women and children-and had taken them up the track towards the river, the road to Santa Rosa.

Carriscant left Constancio with her and set off up the track. He knew that it crossed a small creek that flowed into the Laguna. He had been walking for ten minutes when he heard the first shot. Then two more. Then there was a pause of a few seconds before there was another shot. He left the track and circled through the undergrowth towards the direction of the noise. On the way he counted another five reports. Nine in all.

He came to a break in the trees, at the edge of the clearing where the track crossed the wooden bridge over the small river. Here, huddled together, were thirteen men and young boys guarded by several dozen American soldiers, big men, bearded, in their stained blue shirts and their dented wide-brimmed hats. Some way off, on the bridge were three other American soldiers. Below the bridge the river widened into a dammed pool and around this were gathered the female members of the village, a few very old men, and the children below the age of ten. In the pool nine bodies floated at the lip of the dam.

From his vantage point in the trees above the clearing Carriscant watched as one by one the men and boys were led out on to the bridge. The officer levelled his pistol at the prisoner's head and called in a clear voice 'Remember Balangiga!' and shot him. The body was then heaved over the parapet by the other two men and was carried gently down the stream to join the others bobbing at the edge of the dam, budged together by the sluggish current, like soft logs.

The atmosphere was strangely calm. The sun shone in a milky, hazy sky and the calls of the birds were silenced by the noise of the guns. There was a faint moaning from the group gathered by the pool and some of the littlest children were crying. But the men and boys waited silently to be selected, their heads bowed, saying nothing. While the officer reloaded his pistol, the other two men took over. And always there was the same cry, 'Remember Balangiga!', before the sound of the gun going off. This went on until all the men and boys had been shot, then the Americans shouldered their rifles and packs and marched off down the road to Santa Rosa. Both Flaviano and Ortega had been among the victims. Carriscant learned later that the column had been shot at the previous night while it was bivouacking about a mile from San Teodoro and two men had been killed and four wounded. The assault on the villagers was their act of reprisal. Twenty-two men and boys had been killed.

Carriscant related all this to me in an even, unemotional voice. We sat there in silence after he had finished as I tried to take in the implications of all this.

'Do you think,' I asked him, 'that the officer was Sieverance?'

'I don't know. Certainly Sieverance reminded me of him. That officer was bearded, but fair like Sieverance. Something about his posture too. I couldn't be sure. I asked Delphine if Sieverance had ever served in Batangas but she said she had no idea.' He shrugged. 'There was a likeness, but I was quite far away, forty, fifty yards.'

'Was it Sieverance's unit? Do you know the name of the unit?'

'No.'

'Did you report it?'

Carriscant screwed up his face. 'You've got to understand that fifty-four thousand people died in Batangas in those months. Killed or died from disease, starvation, cholera. My mother wrote to protest to General Bell, but received no reply. Such incidents were commonplace.' He paused, then said carefully, 'The only person I told was Pantaleon.'

'Why?'

'I had to tell someone.'

'Some American officers were tried for atrocities.'

'And General Smith was even cashiered. Unfortunately I had no names, no information. And the San Teodoro massacre was small beer. In Batangas one group of thirteen hundred prisoners was systematically killed over six days after digging their own graves. It was a nasty little war.' He sighed. 'In some ways it's as well that the world has forgotten it.'

We looked at each other, his face gave nothing away: his features were set, his eyes tired, as if the telling of his story had exhausted him.

'Any the wiser?' he asked.

'No. But you haven't answered my question. Who killed Ward and Braun?'

'I thought it was obvious. It must have been Cruz.'

'Cruz? Are you serious?'

'The man was mad. He hated Americans. He was obsessed with his heart operation. Remember he had deliberately made an incision in that man's heart in order to make some cardiac sutures. I think Cruz was going slowly mad, anyway. The war, the loss of the colony. Even my presence at the hospital meant his reputation was in decline also. So he became obsessed with making his name in some way. And in those days the heart was the organ that most frustrated us. That's the only explanation for the mutilations. I remember once he told me he needed European hearts, I don't know why, some mad prejudice, I suppose. I don't think he killed the woman though. That was random. A Tondo stabbing that confused the picture.'

I sighed, uncertain, troubled by this shocking story. One sunny morning in San Teodoro…

Carriscant leaned forward, his chin on the knuckles of his clasped hands, staring at me.

'I hope you don't mind me saying this, Kay. You're an attractive woman, but you don't want to get any stouter. Shall we go?'

I sit in my room bathed, ready for bed, and write the names of the dead down. Ward, Braun, the unnamed woman, Sieverance. Then I make another list.

PANTALEON QUIROGA DR ISIDRO CRUZ JEPSON SIEVERANCE I am not sure why I am doing this, or what I hope it will achieve, my brain is fugged and sluggish after all this new information, but I need to write things down as they occur to me, almost as an exercise, simply to set some process of deduction rolling, to see if the name on the page, in stark black and white, will tell me something. I consider the options.

Pantaleon – Paton Bobby's suspect. He knew about the massacre, he knew about Carriscant's suspicion about Sieverance. Were Ward and Braun the other two soldiers on the bridge? Perhaps Pantaleon's connection with General Elpidio provided him with that sort of information. But I found it hard to figure Pantaleon as an insurrecto fifth columnist.

Carriscant's suspect was Cruz. Seeking strong American hearts for his experiments. But why dump the bodies at key sites of the first day of the war? Or was that just coincidence? Almost everywhere around Manila had some significance considered in the light of February 1899. Cruz did seem somewhat deranged, but I found it hard to believe that he would go so far in his need to make a name for himself.

But Bobby clearly suspected him as well, why else raid his laboratory?…

Jepson Sieverance was my idea. A notion I had. Carriscant told me that an official commission-the Lodge Commission – investigating the post-Balangiga atrocities was sitting throughout 1902. Sieverance, an ambitious young officer, might just have thought it worth removing his two accomplices. Or perhaps Braun and Ward were blackmailing him in some way? Assuming of course that the man Carriscant saw had been Sieverance in the first place, and Carriscant had never been fully convinced of this… On the other hand, Sieverance certainly didn't commit suicide. But then we knew who killed him. Or did we?

I seem to be achieving nothing. I write down one more name: SALVADOR CARRISCANT Tomorrow we go to pay a visit to Senhora Lopes do Livio. Let us see what revelations the new day brings.

SUNDAY, 7 MAY

We breakfasted in the dining room on small hard rolls and honey, washed down with a reasonable pot of coffee. Carriscant didn't seem at all nervous and ate three of the rolls with a gourmandising enthusiasm, asking the waiter to confirm if the honey were clover, or from bees feeding on some other species of flower.

'I can taste it, can't you? The clover,' he said to me.

'A fragrance, a stratum below the surface. But if not clover then lavender, or broom perhaps.'

The waiter was unable to help him and to me the honey tasted of honey. Besides I was not hungry: I left half my roll, drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette rather earlier in the day than normal. I asked Carriscant if we should telephone ahead or send a note to explain who we were but he preferred to go unannounced.

'Suppose it's not her,' he explained. 'We don't want to waste their time. We'll just turn up, much the best way. Bound to be in on a Sunday.' I let him do as he wished. His mood was calm, almost buoyant, whereas I felt a curious sense of foreboding, as if I were about to visit a doctor or specialist, on the point of learning facts about which I would rather remain ignorant.

At about midday we rendezvoused at the hotel entrance and hailed a taxi. The day was fresh and sunny, and above our heads the strip of sky between the buildings was a perfect washed-out blue. Joao hurried out from reception with an umbrella which he insisted on our taking. 'There will be rain in the afternoon,' he said with adamantine certainty. 'Better to be prepared.'

We asked the taxi to drop us outside the gates to the botanical gardens and we walked the short distance to Senhora Lopes do Livio's address. She lived on the second floor of a large apartment block with ornately wrought balconies. A high arched doorway led through to a narrow cobbled courtyard; to the left was the entrance foyer where a stooped old porter stood on a strip of red carpet leading to the elevator. The walls were lined with a small collection of pots containing dusty undernourished ferns struggling to grow in the perpetual gloom. We decided to walk up the stairs to the second floor – Carriscant's suggestion. I think he was beginning to feel the enormous pressures of this encounter for the first time and the chance of delaying matters even for a few seconds was suddenly very desirable.

I reached to press the bell – set beneath a worn and polished brass plate reading 'Lopes do Livio' – but Carriscant's touch on my elbow made me hesitate.

'How do I look?' he said.

'Very good,' I said. 'Very handsome and distinguished.' He smiled broadly at me, his pleasure manifest, and my heart went out to him. I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He was most surprised and his hand went instantly to the spot where my lips had touched him, as if I'd daubed him with paint or pricked him with a pin.

'Bless you, Kay,' he said, moved. 'I don't know what I'd have done without you.'

'Don't give it a thought,' I said. 'Look it may not even be her. We may be tramping around the sweetshops of Europe for a while yet.'

I rang the bell and after some moments we heard footsteps and the door was opened by a young man, about my age. He was tall with unruly curly hair forced severely into an immaculate middle parting, and full rather pouting lips. There was a guarded, suspicious quality about him; he seemed to hold his body angled back slightly, as if pre-emptively fearful of some act of aggression.

He said a few words to us in Portuguese.

'Do you speak English?' I asked.

'Yes I do,' he said, with a slight accent. 'Are you English?'

'We're American. We would like to see Senhora Lopes do Livio, if that were possible.'

'I regret. My mother is not well. She does not receive visitors.'

I could sense Carriscant stiffen beside me.

'I'm a very old friend,' Carriscant said. 'I've come all the way from the United States to meet her again.'

The man frowned. 'She said nothing of this to me.'

'She didn't know I was coming. It took me some time to find her.'

'I am not knowing if my mother had some friends in America…'" His suspicion was acute, suddenly we were importunate salesmen, hawkers who had not used the tradesmen's entrance.

'If you tell her that Dr Salvador Carriscant has come to see her I'm sure she'll grant me a moment of her time.'

The tone of confidence and marginal hostility in Carris-cant's voice was sufficient to have us admitted even though the young man's reluctance was palpable. He showed us into a large pale green sitting room, dimly lit, the shutters drawn half to. The style of the furnishings was old and the swagged green velvet drapes at the three long windows were threadbare. But the proportions of the room were elegant and the furniture of good quality, well chosen. Dark over-varnished portraits of whiskered and waxed military types hung on the walls. I wondered if these were the Lopes do Livio forebears. We took our seat on a gilded bergere, sitting primly, our hands on our knees like candidates waiting for an interview.

'Nervous?' Carriscant asked.

'No… Yes, actually, very.'

'I'm terrified,' he said with a grin. 'Blood turned to ice water.'

We waited for a good ten minutes before the young man returned. His manner had not altered.

'My mother will see you,' he said, clearly annoyed at this decision. 'But I'd ask you to be staying for a short time. She becomes most tired. Please follow me.'

'I'll wait here,' I said to Carriscant.

He took my hand. 'No you don't,' he said, pulling me to my feet. 'You've got to be with me.'

We held hands as we were led down a surprisingly long corridor – the apartment was huge – loose parquet tiles clicking dully under our feet like dice shaken in a leather cup. The stern young man rapped lightly on a door and held it open for us. And now I felt the fear flow through me, a fear for Carriscant rather than myself. Every facet, every aspect of his life had been conditioned for over thirty years by the possibility of this moment one day occurring, and here we now were. The prospect of it somehow disappointing him, of it letting him down – or worse – of it destroying him, was almost insupportable. He squeezed my hand and we stepped into the room together.

This is what I saw. An old lady sat in an armchair before a tall muslin-draped window that gave on to a distant prospect of the botanic gardens. The screened light that fell on her face was soft and pearly. She was thin and her face had sharpened with age, her skin stretched and seamed, but still strong-looking, the nose prominent, the eyes dark and watchful. Her grey hair was pulled loosely behind her head in a bun. She was still beautiful, I thought, in a severe way, in that semi-hidden manner you encounter with certain old women, that still allows you to see the young woman that once was. She seemed far older than Carriscant. Her hands rested in her lap, or rather, rested in the air above her lap, shaking quite noticeably, unnaturally. The thumb and forefinger of her right hand made continuous small movements, as if rolling a pill between them.

Carriscant moved forward to her while I stepped to one side.

' Salvador?' she said, her voice soft, her American accent barely pronounced.

'Yes, Delphine.'

'Don't lurk in the shadows like that. I can't see you.'

'Here I am.'

She looked at him. 'You've got a belly on you.'

'Big appetite, you know me.'

He knelt beside her chair and took her shaking hands in his, their heads moving together. They kissed each other, long and slow, full of a decent and selfless ardour, a real and gentle carnality. I thought of the last kiss they had shared in the darkness of the Calle Francisco, in Intramuros, in Manila, in 1903… A whole generation had intervened, half a lifetime vanished. They broke apart. She touched Carriscant's face with her trembling fingers. He pressed her palm to his mouth.

'Mother, please, this is intolerable!' the young man said loudly. I could see the shock on his face, disturbed to see such passion in old people.

'Oh, shut up, Nando,' she said, her eyes never leaving Carriscant. 'Don't be such a prig.'

Carriscant touched her jaw with his knuckles, touched her neck. 'Beautiful Delphine,' he said, dreamily. 'How beautiful you look.'

'Who's this?' she said, her gaze turning on me.

'My daughter, Kay. She helped me find you.'

I stepped forward to grasp her moving hand – so light-and stared into her face. It was the most curious sensation, encountering someone I felt I knew so intimately for the first time, like meeting a character from a work of fiction, or some long-dead historical figure, in the flesh.

'You have a look of him, you know,' she said. 'Quite distinct.'

I muttered some words of greeting, how pleased I was to meet her finally..

Carriscant rose to his feet. 'Now I want you to go,' he said. 'Delphine and I have much to talk about.'

'Mother, I don't think -'

'Please leave us, Nando,' she said firmly. Which he did at once, with histrionic huffiness.

Carriscant walked me to the door.

'You never really believed me,' he whispered, a smile on his face. 'Did you?'

The waiter opened the bottle and poured the wine into two glasses. It was yellow and cold and in the warm sun the glasses frosted at once, beads of condensation forming quickly. We each reached for our glasses and raised them, chiming the edges briefly, and Carriscant said to me, 'Here's to us, Kay. Here's to us.'

He and Delphine were alone together for just over an hour while I sat in the green sitting room, waiting. When he eventually rejoined me he was openly thumbing tears from his eyes, but he was smiling too, and as we left the apartment his face was serene and confident.

'The delightful Nando is not my son,' he said, almost at once, as we descended the stairs to the gloomy foyer. 'I'm very happy to tell you.'

We found a taxi on the Rua do Pedro V, and Carriscant told the driver to 'take us to a cafe with a view of the river'. We were driven up into Biarro Alto and were dropped at a nondescript place called the Cafe Pacifico but which turned out to have a pretty terrace with a fine view of the wide estuary and the hills beyond Almada. We sat down and ordered our bottle of wine – 'the most expensive and the coldest' – and while we waited for it, munched at a plate of small green olives which had been brought to our table as we sat down.

'She sent you the photograph from the magazine, didn't she?' I asked, my voice kind, but serious. Certain matters had to be cleared up, now.

'Of course.' He looked at me, almost disappointed it had taken so long to figure out. 'She sent it to the San Jeronimo. My one remaining ally on the hospital board made sure it reached me, eventually. It took about three months.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'Well… ' He gave me an apologetic smile. 'I thought it seemed more dramatic, more of a challenge the way I told it. Would enthuse you more.' He shrugged. 'Maybe I should have told you.'

'It was obviously some sort of cryptic cry for help.'

'Yes. Or a test. Wanting to make sure. Just to see if I was still there, if I remembered.' His face saddened. 'I'm sure it was the onset of her illness that provoked it. Time running out and all that.'

'Or guilt?'

'No, Kay. No.'

'So you dropped everything…'

'More or less.' He paused. 'I'll never forget that day.

My youngest son came running in waving this envelope saying could he have the pretty stamp. I couldn't believe my-'

'A son?'

That shrewd look again. How he eked out his revelations! 'I have two,' he said. 'And a young daughter. I've been married for fourteen years. My wife – Mayang-is looking after the restaurant.'

I felt a baffled amused anger rise in me like a bubble. It burst, harmlessly. 'And you'll be going back to them?'

'Naturally,' he said, almost offended. 'I hope you'll come and visit us, soon.'

I said I would. Why not? Anything seemed possible now. Carriscant would have me peeling vegetables in his kitchen, more than likely.

'She waited for me in Singapore, for six weeks,' Carriscant said, his eyes focused on something in the distance. 'Then she heard of the trial and knew I wasn't coming. She miscarried the child there too. A boy.'

'A boy?'

'Yes. And Axel came with her to Europe, all the way, saw her safely there, she said.' Carriscant smiled. 'He was probably in love with her, poor grimy Nicanor… ' He sipped some wine. 'She went to Vienna as I knew she would, we had planned that, and she lived there for some years. She married an Austrian – I didn't ask his name – but he was killed in the war. She met Lopes do Livio in Spain in 1920, in Santander. He was a widower, the boy, Fernando, was his. Do Livio died six years ago. Nando has cared for her ever since: they are very close, she says, he's devoted to her. She's lived in Lisbon since 1923. She has Austrian citizenship. No-one knows her background, not even her husbands did, neither of them.'

We drank some more wine, it was tangy and sharp and Carriscant topped up the glasses. Inland, continents of dark plum-grey clouds were building, threatening the rain that Joao had promised, while out west, over the Atlantic, the afternoon sun shone with that silvery flinty brilliance you find over big oceans, light reflecting back from the huge expanse of shifting waters. We sat in silence for a while and watched the track of a small white steamer trail its saltspill across the flat windless stretch of the Mar de Palha, the Sea of Straw, as it headed lethargically for the docks at Alfama.

I felt full of sadness for Salvador Carriscant. He was in the rare and terrible position of having experienced for an hour or so glimpses of the life he might have led. He had contemplated a parallel existence for himself and had had to face full square the what-might-have-been. This is something we can all do, in moments of idle despair; these possibilities exist for us, but only as reveries or as wistful hindsight. For Carriscant, however, the notional had been made flesh, embodied in the frail shaking old lady he had talked with that afternoon. If only, if only, if only…

'She killed Sieverance,' he said. 'She told me. After she left me she went back to their house for her play, she said, for her play… ' He shook his head incredulously. 'It was an accident. She was creeping out when he surprised her. He had his gun drawn, thinking she was an intruder. She tried to run out, there was a struggle as he tried to prevent her, the gun went off.'

I thought about this: you hear a noise in your house in the small hours of the morning, you arm yourself with a revolver, but the burglar turns out to be your dead wife, whom you saw lying cold and pale beside the body of your stillborn child hours previously… You don't struggle with her, it seemed to me. You might scream, you might collapse in shock. But would you fight?

'I thought,' I said gently, 'that Sieverance was found shot in his bed.'

Carriscant looked at me shrewdly. 'Then she must nave dragged him back.'

'Does she know what happened to you?'

'She knew about the trial. That was when she decided to leave Singapore. She just assumed…' he trailed off.

'She knew we would never be together then'

The clouds build to the east, a great purple range, a massive presence in the panorama, while we sit on, warm in the sun shining on us from over the ocean.

I thought carefully before I spoke. 'I don't believe her, Salvador,' I said, in a measured quiet voice. 'I just don't. She went back to kill Sieverance. To make absolutely sure. It was the most appalling risk. I understand why she wanted to do it, but if she hadn't, if she had gone straight to the docks, straight to Axel… Don't you see? Then everything would have gone according to plan. That's the only explanation that makes -'

'Oh no, no, no. It was a mistake, a terrible accident.' He said this with simple conviction, looking hard at me. 'I believe her.'

'I don't.'

'What do you believe then?' There was a silence before I decided to speak. 'That you killed Sieverance. To set her free. To make sure.'

He laughed. 'Kay, Kay,' he said fondly. 'I love you for that, it makes me sound so very noble.' He reached out and patted my hand. 'She just confessed to me. She told me everything. Let's go back there and ask her, if you want.'

He knew I wouldn't, it was not a convincing gesture and I remained unconvinced. I let it go. What good would my deductions do, my reasoned detections? What do we know of other people, anyway, of the human heart's imaginings? Carriscant's faith was sure and constant. His belief in Delphine Sieverance and what she had done that night was no more absurd than any of the other notions we use to prop up our shaky lives. And he was happy too, that was important. He had achieved what he had set out to -no mean accomplishment – and he had seen the woman he had loved for all these years once more.

'Will you see her again?' I asked.

'No. She asked me not to and I agreed. Besides, I don't want to, don't need to.' He exhaled, and I felt the sadness skewer through him. 'She's going to die soon,' he said, leadenly. 'She has shaking palsy, paralysis agitans, she can hardly walk. She's looking forward to it, can't wait to die, she said. But she's glad she saw me, glad we were together again. I think it helped her enormously.'

His eyes filled with tears, I saw them shimmer and bulge at the eyelid as he thought about her and her approaching extinction. And that provoked my tears too, and I felt the salt sting. I was full of doubts, full of conflicting versions and explanations of this strange and complex story I had been told. But at least I knew now there had been a man called Salvador Carriscant and he had been in love with a woman named Delphine Sieverance. That much at least I could confirm, having witnessed it with my own eyes, and perhaps that was what was most significant. As for the rest, I had my theories, my dark thoughts, my suspicions, my version of events as they had unfolded all those years ago in Manila. But what did it matter? I sat here on this sunny terrace looking out at the Sea of Straw, at the steamer's track, the glass of yellow wine in my hand and I found that I envied Salvador Carriscant, my father. Carriscant's luck. He has loved. That fact was implicated in everything he had done since he had met her and since she had left him. It was a real presence in his messy, crazy life, there but invisible, hidden below the surface, like softly stirring green fields of kelp under a stormy thrashing sea. And I was also witness to the fact that he still loved that old lady with her dark eyes and her shaking hands. And his life was therefore good. And therefore I envy him. I loved too, once: my blue baby, Coleman. But Coleman died. And Delphine is going to die. Aren't we all.

'Look at this,' Carriscant said, gesturing at the scene before us. 'It's very rare, this trick of the light. Quite wonderful.'

The purple livid mass of the thunderclouds seemed to dominate the overarching sky, but still the sun shone on our faces as the charged light thickened and changed colour around us. My finger traced a track through the cold beaded moisture on the sweating bottle; the little steamer had almost reached the quay at Alfama; the sound of traffic and voices rose faintly from the busy streets below us, and I smelt the musky bouquet of the wine as I brought the glass to my lips and drank deep.

So what makes the difference – here and now – on this terrace on this eloquent blue afternoon, as we sit caught between perpetuities of sun and rain, held in this particular moment? I look over at Salvador Carriscant, who is smiling at me, his old broad face radiant with his tremendous good fortune, and I know the answer.