Children of the Sea (432 pages) is Pedro Feijoo’s first novel. It is divided, like a play, into five acts: Simón; Mariña; Daniel; Aeneas; Troy.

Simón Varela is an architect in his thirties, languishing in his studio in the city of Vigo, with no work to speak of. Out of the blue, he receives a call from the personal secretary of a rich widow, Isabel Llobet, the owner of an eighteenth-century mansion on the outskirts of Vigo, by Canido Beach. She would like him to come and work on the gardens. He almost falls out of his chair, but his sense of flattery soon gives way to fear. Why have they chosen him when they could have chosen to work with Michelangelo? The Dafonte-Llobet family is rumoured to have engaged in dishonest dealings, and yet the widow’s voice is soft and soothing. They arrange to meet.

Simón visits the house and is taken to a far corner, where there is a dilapidated fountain in the middle of a stagnant lake. Isabel states that the fountain lies on a natural spring, and she would like him to bring it back to life. Her husband used to love this spot before he died, and she feels her own end is nigh. She would like to make the fountain work again before she dies. Three days later, Simón arrives to present his plans and overhears an agitated conversation in which Isabel rejects an ultimatum and slams down the phone. Isabel appears a lot more tired, a lot less energetic. She asks him to start work as soon as he can and, when taking her leave, repeats her advice to take care with simple journeys since they can be the most treacherous. Simón takes photos of the lake and, back in his studio, notices a series of inscriptions on the stone border, letters and numbers that seem to represent the initials of family members together with years.

Simón hires a site manager, Carlito Rivera, and together they start work on pulling the fountain apart. Over lunch with Ernest, they discover that the family used to run a transport company called Troy, which had dealings with the family of Franco, and also that the couple had two children, Xulio and Mariña. When they return to the site, they remove the stone slabs covering the entrance to the natural spring, which is in a cave under the fountain. They slide down into the cave to locate the start of the water pipe and discover a wooden box inscribed with the words ‘For my children, THE COLOUR OF THE SEA’. Simón imagines it was put there by Isabel’s late husband.

When they turn up for work the next day, there are two police officers and the family doctor. Isabel has died in her sleep, they affirm. But Ernest is convinced that she has been murdered. The doctor has said she died between eight and nine the previous evening. At that time, Ernest was in town, where he stayed until midnight, and Simón and Carlito saw a car leave the property, which they had assumed to be Ernest’s. Also, the lights in Isabel’s bedroom were not on, but she was supposed to have fallen asleep while reading a book. Ernest asks to see the wooden box they found in the cave. He opens the box with his back to the others, without revealing the contents, and simply says, ‘The time has come.’

Simón attends the funeral, where he notices Isabel’s two children and an old man under an umbrella who cannot take his eyes off Xulio, and then bumps into an old friend from his days as a student in Barcelona, Bruno Rodés. Bruno is the police superintendent in charge of the investigation into Isabel’s death. He also has an eye on Xulio, Isabel’s son, whom he describes as the local mafia boss. Simón meets Isabel’s daughter, Mariña, and is struck by her beauty and soft manner. Ernest asks Simón to attend the reading of Isabel’s will the following Monday since he is one of the benefactors, which Simón cannot understand.

In her will, Isabel leaves most of her property and money to her two children, with a clear preference for Mariña. From the wooden box that Simón discovered under the lake, she leaves Xulio and Mariña a gold coin each, and Simón a sealed envelope. Simón wonders how she could have known about this box if he had only just discovered it on the day she died. Xulio and Mariña argue on the way out. Xulio calls their father a ‘Fascist’ and accuses Mariña of abandoning the family while he stayed behind. Simón and Mariña visit a local café, where Simón asks Mariña to tell him all about her father. This is the end of the first act.

Mariña’s father was Aeneas Dafonte-Maristany. His father was Daniel Dafonte, who left the village of Canido outside Vigo when he was eighteen and emigrated to Argentina. There, in the mountains of San Fernando del Valle, he struck gold. He later married a rich heiress whose family was from Barcelona, Montserrat Maristany. They had a son, Aeneas, who studied Economics at Harvard and took the reins of his father’s company. Aeneas’ parents decided to make a trip to Barcelona to visit their roots, but the year was 1936, the start of the Spanish Civil War, and they got caught up in a skirmish between anarchists and socialists and were killed. Having buried his parents, Aeneas sold the company and moved to Vigo, where he bought the old mansion in Canido and set up the transport company Troy. He later married Isabel Llobet and became a close associate of Franco’s regime. He died in 1976. Mariña, unable to get her mother to tell her about her father, ran away to study Art History in Barcelona. Mariña is exhausted after telling her story and takes her leave of Simón with a kiss.

Xulio is being watched by Bruno Rodés and his sidekick, the detective Eladio Penedo. They are waiting outside the warehouse of his company of naval transport, Aventino Ltd, but Bruno knows that Xulio is really involved in drug smuggling. They see his best speedboat pilot arrive for a meeting. Xulio tells the pilot he has received a phone call from one Zé Lucano, offering him a new line of business and revealing he has photos of the two of them unloading a consignment.

At home, Simón opens the envelope and discovers lists of initials followed by full names. Simón understands these to be the names of victims of Mariña’s Fascist father, perhaps motivated by revenge for the death of his parents at the hands of anarchists in Barcelona. The first list contains only initials, no names. Later that night, Simón receives a phone call from Mariña, who wants to find out more about the gold coin she was given in a bag labelled ‘Jackob Neumann Antiquities’. This shop is near where Simón lives, and she invites him to go with her the next day. In the shop, an assistant identifies the coin as a piece of eight minted in America in the second half of the seventeenth century. Outside the shop, Simón spots the thickset man who was holding the old man’s umbrella at Isabel’s funeral. He chases them and, after punching Simón, steals the coin and warns them against trying to get it back. Mariña accompanies Simón to his house, where he confesses his conclusions about the lists in the envelope. Mariña assures him that her father could have been many things, but not a murderer. She assumes this has something to do with the transport company Troy.

The old man from the funeral visits the shop Jackob Neumann Antiquities. He introduces himself as a visitor from the New World with particular interest in gold coins from the wrecks of Spanish galleons sunk at the Battle of Vigo Bay in 1702. Neumann claims no such treasure ever existed, but clearly feels uncomfortable with the direction the conversation has taken. The visitor, who goes by the name of Otto Wessler, is sure it did exist and asks Neumann to look out for any coins similar to the one he is holding, handing him a business card with the name ‘Hugo Brauner’ on it. At home, Simón reaches the conclusion that two sets of initials in the first list could refer to Mariña’s father, Aeneas Dafonte-Maristany, and to a certain Antón Berasategui Rodríguez who sent letters to Simón’s grandmother every week from London. He visits Mariña in her apartment and is telling her this when the doorbell rings. It is Jackob Neumann. He has a gold coin similar to the one that was stolen, which he was given by Mariña’s father. He claims that this coin belongs to a treasure the English collected from the Battle of Vigo Bay and stored aboard the galleon Santo Cristo de Maracaibo, which reportedly hit a reef and sank off the west coast of Galicia. But this is not Jackob’s version of events. This is the end of the second act.

In 1939, the director of the German Archaeological Institute, Fausto Wessler, and his secretary, Hugo Brauner, received a visit from a young sailor, Daniel Beiroa. Word had it the Germans were looking for the treasure from the Battle of Vigo Bay. Daniel explained that, according to local legend, the British had hired a pirate, John Baker, to accompany the treasure on the Santo Cristo de Maracaibo back to England. Captain John Baker pretended the Santo Cristo de Maracaibo had hit a reef and gradually fell behind the rest of the British fleet. This gave him time to offload the gold in a grotto on the island of Ons. After the Santo Cristo de Maracaibo sank, his idea was to return for the treasure later, but his own ship sank in a storm. Daniel offered to take the Germans to this grotto. Mariña asks the narrator, Jackob, why she needs to know all of this, and Jackob replies because Daniel was her father. The next day, Simón and Mariña visit Ons. They meet an old surfer, Yago Ray, who claims to be from London and takes them to Ons on a powerful speedboat. There, they confirm that the grotto exists, and Yago Ray tells them the story of Aeneas and Dido. Mariña begins to suspect that Daniel could be her father, having changed his name to Aeneas and invented his own family history. Simón wonders what an old surfer is doing with such a powerful speedboat and suspects Yago Ray of drug smuggling.

Meanwhile, Xulio has a meeting with Zé Lucano, who explains he needs Xulio and his pilot for a pick-up job. He pays Xulio an advance of 60,000 euros. Simón asks Bruno about Yago Ray, who confirms that he is clean, but that Jackob Neumann was arrested for public disorder in the late 1960s, shouting that he had killed them all and killed Hugo. He was bailed by none other than Mariña’s father, Aeneas Dafonte. Jackob continues with his story. Daniel took the Germans to the grotto, which he entered, returning with three gold coins and confirming the existence of the treasure. Before going back to retrieve all the gold, Daniel overheard a conversation between Fausto Wessler and the Führer, in which Wessler alleged that the total amount of gold could fund the Eastern Campaign. Daniel had thought the gold was destined for a museum and felt betrayed. He was about to escape when he bumped into Hugo, the secretary, who assured him he wasn’t a Nazi, even if the others were. Daniel gave him two of the coins and left the ship with a stick of dynamite in order to blow up the entrance to the cave. At this point in the narrative, Mariña recognizes that Jackob Neumann is in fact the secretary, Hugo Brauner. Jackob explains that, while Daniel blew up the entrance to the cave, he had an argument with Fausto Wessler and blew up the ship. He then hid for a year in the kitchen of Daniel’s brother, León, in Vigo. This is the end of the third act.

In 1940, Daniel reappeared. He had been in Buenos Aires. He explained he had moved all the gold to a southern gallery before blowing up the cave and taken a few coins with him in order to survive. He had also invented a new identity, Aeneas Dafonte. Hugo did the same and from that day on became Jackob Neumann. When Simón and Mariña leave Jackob’s house, they are observed by Zé Lucano, who informs an old man on the phone and accuses him of being too patient with Isabel Llobet beforehand. Simón reaches the conclusion that the initials in the first list refer to old and new identities. And Antón Berasategui Rodríguez’s previous identity has to be León, Daniel’s adopted brother, who left his wife behind, not knowing she was pregnant, when he escaped to London. This wife, Elisa, was Simón’s own grandmother, which means he is León’s grandson. This is the end of the fourth act.

In the spring of 1940, Daniel, León and Hugo recovered some of the gold. This enabled Daniel, now Aeneas, to set up the international transport company Troy and pass himself off as a generous collaborator of Franco’s regime. Meanwhile, Hugo, now Jackob, set up a shop of antiquities. What in fact they were doing was helping people escape by boat and providing them with false identities. Simón understands that the lists hide the names of all who escaped and changed their identities. Otto Wessler visits Jackob in his apartment with his sidekick, Zé Lucano. He reveals how, after his father’s death when the ship exploded, he and his mother were forced to emigrate to Brazil. There he met a shoeshiner whom Aeneas and Jackob had smuggled out of Spain and given false papers, and realized that Aeneas and Jackob were in fact Daniel and Hugo, the ones who had deprived his father of his gold. Otto tried to talk to Isabel, but she refused to cooperate. Jackob claims that the rest of the gold is in a bank deposit in Switzerland, but Otto is sure Simón and Mariña know where the gold is and signals to Zé Lucano, who kills Jackob with an injection in the neck.

After discovering Jackob’s corpse in his flat and calling the police, Simón and Mariña head to Ons with Yago Ray, this time with the intention of entering the grotto. But the boxes in the southern gallery are completely empty. At this point, Otto and Xulio arrive on the scene. Xulio and Zé Lucano are killed in a shootout. Otto has a pistol, but Yago Ray turns up and floors him with a punch. In the subsequent chase, Otto and Xulio’s pilot, Blanco, are outmanoeuvred by Yago Ray and killed. Simón and Mariña escape. Back in Mariña’s apartment, they make love. At the end of the book, they finally unearth the gold stash under the fountain of the mansion on Canido Beach.

Children of the Sea is a tight, expertly written narrative full of humour and intrigue, which could easily appeal to a wider audience. The novel received two awards, the Martín Sarmiento and the San Clemente, and was shortlisted for the Xerais Prize for best novel.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne