Road To The Coast

by John Harris

  ‘Well, for God’s sweet sake,’ Ash said out loud. ‘This is enough to make a man grow two heads!’

  The first aircraft had finished its circle and was howling back over the town now, and as Ash ducked again the dust jumped once more under his nose. Then he saw a lizard on a stone by the door move forward in a little jerky run, and freeze again, its dun-coloured body the same tint exactly as the stone on which it squatted.

  ‘I should shove your head down, wonder-boy,’ Ash said. ‘It’s not so god-damn safe as all that here.’

  The final bomb exploded close by the Cadillac and immediately Ash was on his feet with a shout, indignant and despairing at the same time as he saw the mule carriage and the bus disappear and the car perform a graceful arc out of the dust and smoke and fall on its back. The mules, miraculously untouched, screamed and careered down an alley between the houses, the fragments of the shafts clattering and banging on the walls, smashing down the hydrangeas, scattering pots of geraniums and sending the chickens into the air in an explosion of feathers and noise. For a second as they disappeared there was silence as the dust settled and the pieces of wood and metal came down, then there was a “woof” as the petrol in the overturned car caught fire and orange flames touched with sooty black leapt out and clawed at the wreckage of the bus.

  Ash stood with the briefcase and the jacket clutched to his chest, the dust filling the lines round his nose and mouth, gaping at the burning vehicle. Inside him as he stared in dumb fury, was a searing hatred for all that was Latin-American, for all military juntas and dictatorships, and he began shouting violently at the empty sky.

  ‘God damn you,’ he yelled, shaking his fist. ‘God damn and blast you to everlasting flaming hell – the whole bloody boiling of you!’

  Then he stopped abruptly as he became conscious of someone else there with him in addition to the old crone on the floor, and he turned quickly and found himself face to face with a woman who had emerged from the door leading to the living quarters at the back of the shop.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Those are my sentiments exactly. I was on the bus.’

  Two

  Ash stared across the width of the shabby shop at the newcomer, trying to collect his wits and recover a measure of self-control, unaware of the old woman behind him picking up the fruit which had rolled across the floor, mumbling ‘Madre de Dios, Madre de Dios’ over and over again like a litany of indignation.

  There was a cracked mirror on the far wall bearing an advertisement for Coca-Cola and he was reflected in it, just a little too striking to be true, with his lean features smudged with dirt and the ruddy hair that fell over his eyes dusted now with a fine plaster that had drifted down from the roof and into the collar of his shirt.

  He straightened up with a jerk and stared down at the newcomer.

  ‘Where the hell did you come from?’ he demanded. His voice was brisk and the words came out in a peremptory bark almost like a command.

  She hesitated, then smiled, a friendly smile that was warm and welcoming and quite unmoved by the monumental heat of his anger. ‘In there,’ she said. ‘Where’d you think I came from?’

  He stared back at her, still unsmiling, knocking off the grit that stuck to the perspiration on the palms of his hand and the remains of the dust that had left two creamy-coloured patches on the knees of his trousers.

  ‘Were you sheltering?’ he demanded brusquely.

  ‘I suppose you’d call it that, though I wouldn’t like to put it too much to the test.’

  She brushed the dust off her shoulders and smiled again.

  ‘Am I glad to see you,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what a joy it was to hear a few words of English – even those words. They only speak Spanish here. I only speak English. It has its problems.’

  She was a well-built woman with a ripe figure and a challenging manner that went oddly with the look of bewilderment that was still on her face, half-obscured by her smile and her friendliness.

  For a while he continued to stare at her, the smell of burning in his nostrils, his eyes still dazzled by the flash of the bomb which had exploded near the car, hostile still, almost as though he resented her being there as well as himself, too annoyed by the loss of the Cadillac to say anything, almost as though he associated her with the outrage, as though his fury was such that he couldn’t bear to be distracted from the enjoyment of it. Then the brisk facile charm that had aided him in bars and hotels halfway round the world began to react to the sight of a damsel in distress and reasserted itself, shoving itself with a brash growing effrontery through the bitterness he felt at the disaster. Slowly, the tenseness of his face softened.

  ‘What are you doing in a crummy joint like this?’ he said at last.

  ‘Same as you, I suppose,’ she replied, her voice a little unsteady. ‘Trying to get out of it.’

  She was pale under the dust on her face but not apparently afraid.

  ‘You a Yank?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Do I sound like a Yank?’

  ‘You sound English. London, I’d guess.’ He stared out of the shop doorway at the billowing black smoke that rose into the sky. ‘Look what those bloody clots did to my car,’ he said bitterly. ‘All my clothes were in it.’

  ‘Mine were in the bus,’ she replied in a way that cut off the resentment in him at once. Slowly his expression gave way to a friendly grin which, driving away the cold rage that gave him the look of some great red predatory animal, transformed his features and made him seen more approachable.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked.

  She seemed uncertain, and still a little shaken by the shooting and the bombing.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not really used to this sort of caper.’

  ‘What are you hoping to do then?’

  ‘I’ve tried to hire a car, but it’s impossible.’

  ‘I’ll get you one,’ he said immediately, without giving a second’s thought to the problems his offer might produce.

  She laughed nervously, impulsively, as though she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘I think you’re the answer to a maiden’s prayer,’ she said. ‘I can’t even buy food – at least, nothing but fruit. I think they think it’s going to be a long war.’

  Ash’s eyes were steady on her face, cool and appraising. It had by no means escaped his notice that she was good-looking in a striking way – handsome was the word – with clear-cut features and good colouring. She was no longer a girl but – Ash’s eyes glowed as the thought crossed his mind – by God, what a woman! She had black – electric-black – hair and steady dark eyes that had a deep wisdom of experience in them.

  Ash, old boy, he was telling himself calmly, this woman’s got something. This woman starts were all the rest leave off. His bold opportunist’s mind was already racing as a thousand and one possibilities occurred to him. Perhaps there wasn’t so much wrong with his luck after all, he decided, for it wasn’t bequeathed to every man every day of his life to find himself confronted with a woman like this.

  She laughed again, unsure of herself. ‘The only damned thing they’ll sell me is soft drinks,’ she said. ‘But a diet of Coca-Cola’s going to get a bit monotonous before long.’

  ‘Have no fear,’ he said with a breezy arrogance, not taking his eyes off her. ‘I’ll get the bastards moving for you. What’d you like?’

  She looked at him in surprise at the all-embracing terms of his offer, as though she could have asked for boar’s head and larks’ tongues and he wouldn’t have turned a hair.

  ‘Bread and cheese would do,’ she said simply.

  ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘It sounds easy but I couldn’t get it.’

  He seemed entranced with her, standing in the shop doorway, impervious to the outside, his eyes all the time on her face. She wasn’t beautiful exactly but there seemed to be something exciting about her that was still friendly and accommodating, and his spirits began to soar.

  ‘Your staff work’s
all wrong, I expect,’ he commented, without shifting his gaze. ‘Where are you headed for?’

  ‘The coast if I can get there.’

  ‘Buenos Aires?’

  ‘I’d just like to get out of the damned place, that’s all!’ There was a fervent prayer in her words and the way she said them that warmed him to her. He was experiencing exactly the same emotions himself at that particular moment.

  She stood quite still, quite willing apparently to let him admire her, as though she were used to being noticed, staring back at him with those inky-velvety eyes of hers, then she shrugged.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We’re not getting very far just looking at each other, are we?’

  He jumped, realizing he had been rude, and grinned. Fishing out a cigarette case, he held it out towards her.

  ‘Thank God for tobacoo,’ she said as she took one. ‘I haven’t had a smoke all day.’

  ‘Know anybody here who can help you?’ he asked. ‘Anybody who could look after you?’

  ‘Not a soul!’ She shook her head, her expression rueful, and he tried for a moment to assess what her background was, for clearly she didn’t belong in Argentina any more than he did himself. But while it was obvious to anyone that he might have had business there he couldn’t for the life of him see that she had. Half a dozen things crossed his mind but none of them seemed to fit her.

  ‘You a tourist or something?’ he demanded, puzzled.

  She shook her head again and, studying her, watching her, noting everything about her, he put down her background at last with the accuracy of a compass as a safe world of hard-working people, and staunch moralities that they wore like banners in the wind; a world of struggle, and cleanliness next to Godliness, of church on Sundays and Faith, Hope and Charity; and it made him all the more curious to know what had brought her to Flores with its dusty main street and its sun-bleached, sagging buildings.

  ‘No, I’m not a tourist,’ she was saying. ‘I just want to get home to England. That’s all. I just want to get out of the country without everyone wagging their mitts in my face and jabbering at me in a lingo I don’t understand.’

  ‘Sounds as though it’s important,’ he commented, his anger continued to die as it was submerged in his curiosity, for she seemed to have no intention of letting anyone forget or dissuade her from her decision. ‘What have you done wrong?’

  She looked up quickly at him, her eyes flashing with an unexpected glow of fear and he saw immediately that his words had touched on something she didn’t want brought out into the light.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, in a way that continued to leave him in some doubt. ‘I just want to go home. That’s all.’

  He grinned again, abruptly. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ he said. ‘It happens that I’ve got a ship laid on for myself. I was on my way to her just now when those clowns out there’ – he gestured vaguely to the smoking car – ‘well, when that happened. A Jew boy I played golf with in Santa Fé fixed it for me. She’s in the river just south of here. SS Ballaculish. I suppose if I were pushed, I could get you aboard her too.’

  Her eyes lit up again with delighted incredulity and he was conscious once more of their beauty. She laughed, in a rich contralto, as though she had a tremendous capacity for enjoying life.

  ‘I’m pushing,’ she said with that husky voice of hers that reminded him of old wine. ‘Hard.’

  ‘There’s a long way to go, mind you,’ he pointed out. ‘But once we reach her, you’re halfway there. She’s on her way home.’

  ‘To England?’ The relief and gratitude seemed to drain the strain out of her face immediately.

  ‘To Montevideo for wool, and then England, home and beauty.’

  ‘Are you certain she’s there?’

  ‘I greased the right palms.’

  She seemed to be studying him, cautiously, with a doubtful wariness, as though she didn’t entirely trust him. His whole manner indicated his awareness of women and a complete knowledge of them.

  He had felt, as a matter of fact, that the woman in front of him was a fair swop for any car, even a Cadillac. He was sufficiently self-reliant not to take too hard the loss of his transport, for he knew it was well within his powers to replace it as he had promised, even there in Flores, small and fleabitten as it was. And a chap was entitled to consider himself once in a while, he thought, staring at her – especially when the going was rough. There was nothing like a bender, or a day off, or a night out with a girl to make a man get things in their proper perspective again. He began to feel that a short holiday at the coast might not be a bad idea after all, especially with someone like this around to look at and decorate the scenery.

  The woman was smiling more confidently now as the glow from his self-assurance touched her and swept away her doubt.

  ‘We’d better go along together,’ he went on. ‘Got any money?’

  She looked startled. ‘Money?’ And the doubt was there in her eyes again immediately.

  He gestured with a vague irritated flick of the hand. ‘Dinari. Ackers. Geld.’

  ‘Oh! Yes,’ she said. ‘A little. Not much. Barely enough in fact.’

  ‘Mind if I have a look at it?’

  Her eyes still dubious, she fished in her handbag and passed a wad of notes across to him. She seemed to hesitate a moment, then she looked up. ‘That enough?’ she asked.

  He glanced at it briefly, assessing its value as expertly as a cash register.

  ‘That’s one thing I’m short of,’ he said. ‘A temporary touch of the old poverty. Mind if I keep it for the time being?’

  She stared at him for a moment, as though she were weighing him up, studying his lean good looks, the cut of his clothes, the expensive briefcase he carried.

  ‘Do you have to?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t have to.’

  ‘Will it help us if you do? I mean, why can’t I hang on to it?’

  ‘No reason at all. Only we need a car and someone’s got to get it. I thought I was going to. Can you speak the lingo?’

  She seemed relieved. ‘“Yes,” “No,” and “Where’s the Ladies?”’

  ‘That won’t get you far.’

  ‘I’ve done all right up to now. Can you speak it?’

  He nodded. ‘Like a native. But we might need all the dough we can raise between us if we have to grease any more palms. It won’t be as easy as all that to get a car.’

  She shrugged and he stuffed the money into his pocket, noticing that she watched it disappear with an expression of wonder, as though she couldn’t believe that she had let it go so easily.

  ‘Pity we had to lose the Cadillac,’ he said quickly, before she could make any comment. ‘It was a pretty little buggy. Gave us a bit of class. And class counts. Opens door. Opens pockets. Open hearts. Good for a bit of tick at the grocer’s.’

  She smiled, as though she had already suspected he used what assets he possessed, his accent, his manner, his ability to wear clothes and impress people, to the best possible advantage.

  ‘Never mind, though,’ he went on. ‘We’ll have to find something else, that’s all. This dump’s clearing now, by the look of it, but it’s going to be gummed up again before long.’

  ‘We can’t get far on the roads,’ she pointed out. ‘I’ve had a try.’

  ‘No.’ He nodded in agreement. ‘I reckon we’d better head straight for the river. Across country. It’s not far off and the ship’s waiting at Santa Rosa. She’s been picking up hides there. I don’t suppose she’s very big by the sound of her. She wouldn’t be so far up the river if she were and she certainly wouldn’t be carrying hides. Still, so long as she floats–’

  He left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the air, and she laughed shortly, excitedly, as though she couldn’t wait to get on – in a way that gave him an immediate sense of camaraderie. Then her expression, clear and unsecretive, was doubtful again for a moment.

  ‘Shall we be able to get through to her? With
all these people on the roads? With all this shooting going on?’

  He looked at her with those bold yellow eyes of his and she found she was prepared to believe anything he put before her. ‘You bet your sweet life we will,’ he said. ‘Just leave it to me.’

  She smiled. ‘Maybe it won’t last long anyway,’ she said. ‘They told me the government will be in control again soon.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself.’ He pointed through the door. Across the road, a huge picture of the tottering dictator was spattered with mud and daubed with the words “Mueram los Peronistas. Viva la Patria.”

  ‘They wouldn’t have done that two years back,’ he said. ‘They’re sick of dictatorships.’

  ‘From what I’ve heard, you wouldn’t call the other governments blazing democracies.’

  He laughed. ‘True enough. They could always change the president by marching a couple of regiments through the Plaza de Mayo. But this is the second flap in three months. And this time it’s finito. It isn’t just the Navy this time. It’s the Air Force and the Army as well. They’re all in it, for what they’re worth – which isn’t much. They have to lasso the conscripts to get their boots on. My old crowd could have wiped the floor with ’em any time.’ His eyes flashed with a fierce nostalgia for a moment so that he looked strangely hungry and eager.

  He stared over his shoulder through the door at the crowd arguing round the smoking hole in the road, fringed by the wreckage of the bus and the cart, and the upturned car with the oily coils still pouring from it. He had begun to look now as though he experienced similar disasters every day of his life and met them all with equanimity.

  ‘Lousy bit of bomb-aiming,’ he said ‘Bad training. Wouldn’t offer you a fly-button for the lot of ’em.’

  With the sun that filtered into the shop catching the angles of his face, he looked arrogant and impertinent at the same time; bold and confident with the sort of sureness which gave him the ability to say and do outrageous things any time he liked and get away with them. There was no artificiality about him. His manner was as natural to him as the bony nose on his face, and had the effect of making her feel shabby and smaller than she was.