“‘Look for my clothes, Jorge,’ he said, ‘while I write a note to the alcalde.’
“That was like him. He didn’t know whether he’d see the man again, and he wasn’t going without a word of thanks.
“I retrieved our clothes from the damned odd places they’d got to, and we put on whatever came to hand. Anastasio gave the girls a great wad of sucres, and we tumbled into the car. We did that run back to Riobamba in twenty minutes with no time to think of anything except sorting ourselves out. By the time we’d each got dressed in our own clothes we found we were only short one tie and one pair of socks. We tossed for them. He won the tie and I won the socks.
“There was Doña Clara in the hall of the hotel with all the baggage round her, and all the hotel staff and her team of porters trying not to laugh. You can imagine what we looked like. I can’t answer for myself, but Anastasio had one of his moustaches up in the air and the other spread out flat like a wing. And his coat was all white with plaster where a bit of the ceiling had fallen on it.
“‘Queridita,’ says Anastasio, ‘queridita Clarita, you will not believe me, but—’
“I tell you, I felt sorry. I’ve never seen such an angry woman. She’d been hurt, you see, right where it hurt most—in her pride. She might have forgiven him if nobody else had known that he’d stayed out all night. But here he was in front of all the people she’d been impressing for the last twelve hours.
“‘Se ha pasado algo muy raro,’ Anastasio said.
“If you’d listened to the grave voice he put on you’d have believed what he said: that something very rare had come to pass. I knew he hadn’t thought of what it was yet. But I could have sworn he was a just man to whom something outrageous had happened. Kidnaping or mistaken arrest.
“‘Muy raro,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘Muy raro.’
“Then he pretended to notice the time. He sent all those fellows running to the station, paid his bill, shot a man upstairs for my bag, and put on a tremendous show of activity which would keep him away from his wife until he could think of a story.
“‘Jorge,’ he said to me, ‘for the love of God, what will I tell her?’ and he giggled, for he was still in no state to see the awfulness of what had happened. ‘You’re the British Minister, Jorge,’ he said to me. ‘Think, hijo mio! Think of something!’
“Well, I was tight as a tick myself, and all I could think of was how damn funny he looked without any socks. And at that we went off into yells of laughter and staggered over to the station on the heels of Doña Clara.
“The alcalde was there to see us off with some of the local worthies. Anastasio fell into his arms and began to thank him for the hospitality of Riobamba—but in such well-chosen words that nobody could tell exactly how much hospitality we had enjoyed. Then he introduced me all over again.
“‘And let me tell you, amigo,’ he says to the alcalde, ‘that you have the honor of speaking to the new British Minister.’
“The alcalde took him quite seriously, shook my hand, and apologized for not having treated me with profounder respect the night before. The vice president stared at him. Then he let out a whoop, linked his arms in the alcalde’s and mine, and led us at a run to the train. Thanks to the alcalde we got up the steps of the coach in good order and halted in front of Doña Clara. She looked clean through us, but that didn’t stop Anastasio.
“‘Chiquita,’ he says reproachfully, ‘why didn’t you wait to hear what I was going to tell you? A triumph for us! A compliment! Our friend had a telegram last night appointing him British Minister to Ecuador—and who more fitted than Don Jorge? Are you surprised that we celebrated the good news, my angel? Isn’t it natural that we should have drunk more than we should—and all the time wishing you had not been so tired so that you could have been with us!’
“She opened her mouth just long enough to say that she didn’t believe a word of it. I smiled at her kindly and said that I should hardly jest about representing my country. She paid no attention to me.
“Then the alcalde tried his eloquence on her. He said that he was a married man himself and quite understood her feelings—and that he had been with us all the time to see that we came to no harm. He expressed his joy at being the first to greet the new Minister to Ecuador. Anybody could see, he said, that your humble servant was a person altogether out of the ordinary who had a long and honorable career before him. He was happy that friendship between the two great nations had reached the point when—and so on and so on. It filled the gap.
“Doña Clara asked where the telegram had been delivered, and Anastasio swore that I had been expecting it and called at the telegraph office to ask.
“‘Where is it?’ she snapped.
“‘Jorge,’ he said to me. ‘Where is it?’
“That beat me. I can’t think at that speed. I’m not a politician.
“‘Mother of God!’ said he. ‘You must have left it in the telegraph office when you sent the reply! Hold the train!’ he ordered the stationmaster. ‘The British Minister has forgotten something!’
“We ran over to the telegraph office. Anastasio locked the door and had a few words with the operator. I’d not realized that to a vice president all things are possible. Then he asked me the name of our Foreign Secretary. I didn’t know. There was a Labour Government and I hadn’t heard of any of them.
“‘Look in your passport, chico!’ he yelled.
“I looked. It was issued in 1922 and signed by Curzon. Those were the best passports we ever had. Old Curzon’s jobs and titles filled a whole page. I tell you, those British passports used to impress the frontier police anywhere. After all, they’re human like the rest of us.
“Anastasio pulled himself together and dictated the cable in Spanish. I put it into English—Clara could read English; she’d been educated in a high-class convent—and then that telegraph operator tapped it on his machine so that it came out printed on the tape. I’ve got it still.”
Trevithick opened his pocket case and passed me a telegram, the creases of its folds finely penciled by the accumulation of dust. It was quite faultless—stamped, dated, handed in at Quito, and delivered at Riobamba, the strips of paper tape pasted on the usual form. It read:—
trevithick riobamba
following cable received for you fo code 37 decoded here quote believe advisable open legation quito will you accept appointment his majestys minister plenipotentiary to ecuador cable reply curzon of kedleston unquote stop hearty congratulations do accept pennyfather
“Well, when we got back to the train we found that Doña Clara had been effecting repairs to her make-up—a sure sign that she was about half convinced. To help her over her embarrassment Anastasio showed her the cable, while I strolled up and down the platform followed by respectful stares and wishing I’d had time to shave. When they asked me if I would permit the train to leave I said I would, and climbed on board.
“Doña Clara was all over me with apologies. She had known from the start, she said, that my business in Quito was mysterious. She had expected something of this sort from the moment I got on the train. She knew it all along; she just knew it. It’s odd how the stupider a woman is, the more she believes she has miraculous insight. Nature’s compensation, I suppose. And then she asked me a lot of questions about the royal family, which I answered as best I could. I’m a monarchist every time, and they didn’t suffer—but I did tell her she looked as if she had Bourbon blood herself. She was so flattered that when her husband pulled out a bottle of brandy that the alcalde had thoughtfully left with us, she just tapped him with her little gloves and told him he was a naughty Anastasio.
“We were a bit exhausted after all the hard thinking, and that brandy splashed into the remains of the champagne and set it working as if we’d just started on the night before. We were great. Great. Somebody must have sent word down the line that the new British Minister a
nd the vice president were on board, and at each little station there was a crowd to welcome us. I’ve never traveled in such state. They filled all the empty spaces in the coach with fruit and flowers and we made speeches from the observation platform and kissed their children, and every now and then the conductor would come down the train to ask if there were anything we wanted.
“Well, our mood went with the contour line. While we were climbing up to the last pass at twelve thousand feet, nothing could hold us. And we swooped over the edge of the Andes with the vice president and the British Minister dancing on the observation platform, and half a dozen toy balloons—or what looked like them—tied to the rail and blowing out behind.
“When we had got down to five thousand, and stopped for lunch, I began to remember I wasn’t the British Minister at all, but we had some more champagne at lunch and it kept us going. I stroked Doña Clara’s hand and filled up my notebook with lunch and dinner engagements for the four days we should have to wait in Guayaquil before the boat left. I gathered that half a dozen of Clara’s intimate friends were going north with us too, and she made me promise I’d be particularly polite to them on board. I let her think I was going back to London to settle my affairs before taking up the new post. As a matter of fact I was booked to Panama, and hadn’t the faintest idea what I’d do when I got there.
“At sea level we cleaned ourselves up and slept for a bit. It was hot as hell. We were running through nigger villages and cocoa and banana plantations, and the sweat was rolling off us so thick that if you’d put a match to it, it would have lit. When we woke up we bought a couple of pineapples off a little yellow girl and ate them and felt better. But the better we felt, the worse it was. I had nothing to lose myself, but by this time I loved Anastasio like a brother and I saw trouble ahead.
“At last he asked straight out what the hell we were to do now. We had both been thinking that on and off since lunch, but it was all right so long as neither of us said it. We could keep going, if you see what I mean.
“I said I didn’t know what we were to do—that the best thing would be for me to disappear as soon as we reached Guayaquil. Anastasio started to jump up and down. The heat was getting on his nerves. He said it wouldn’t solve anything if I just vanished.
“‘Muy bien!’ I replied. ‘But you’ll have to explain some time.’
“‘I won’t!’ he said. ‘I can’t! Jorge,’—he took my hand between two of his and fondled it just as I’d been doing to Doña Clara,—‘for the love of God, don’t let me down!’
“Of course you can’t realize what a stew we were in. You haven’t met Doña Clara. Look at that picture! A self-important snob of a woman who would never let him forget that he’d once made a fool of her—let alone the fact that he’d come home without his socks. And the worst of it was that she was damned lovely. It just meant that if he confessed she’d have a double hold on him for the rest of his life.
“I said I’d do anything he liked—fall ill for the next four days in Guayaquil and miss the boat. But no—he wouldn’t have it. I’d have the best doctors in Guayaquil and Clara at my bedside with a nurse’s uniform and a big red cross on her shapely bosom. She wouldn’t miss such a chance to be noble.
“Well, by now we were halfway across the marshes, running in to Duran, where you take the ferry for Guayaquil, and Doña Clara was trying on her picture hat. Before we’d had time to decide anything we were in Duran station, and a dozen of Clara’s friends and Anastasio’s politicos were there to meet us. He had to introduce me as the future British Minister, and that was that. We crossed the river to Guayaquil in the President’s private launch, and I was popular with the politicos, though I say so myself. The fact is, I think I missed my career. If a man can represent his country well when he’s suffering from an evil conscience and a hang-over he ought to be pretty damned good on a plain working day.
“We all pleaded tiredness after the journey, and except for a short reception at their house I didn’t have to act any longer. Of course Clara wouldn’t let me go to a hotel but insisted on putting me up. They had a house at Guayaquil as well as Quito and God knows where else. I went to bed at eight and slept like a log and didn’t wake up till five in the morning, when I found Anastasio sitting by my bedside with a coffeepot and some fruit salts and the air of a family doctor watching his patient come round from the anaesthetic.
“He had that light in his eye. Quiet triumph, but a little unsure how I would react. Of course I asked him if he’d thought of anything. He shook his head and said he had, but that I wouldn’t like it. Then he addressed me as earnestly as if I’d been leading the opposition in the senate. He put the problem very neatly: (a) I couldn’t wait for the boat. If I did, I should be entertained by all Guayaquil, and the President and Pennyfather would get to hear of it. (b) I couldn’t just vanish, or Clara would smell a rat. So we were left with (c)—that I must cease to be the British Minister openly and for good and sufficient reasons.
“Well, that was all right, given the reasons.
“‘Did you ever take a bribe, Jorge?’ he asked.
“‘Not from a friend,’ I told him—and that was true.
“‘Well, you have to take one from me,’ he went on, ‘and report to your government that it’s not worth while to open a legation at Quito, and you won’t accept the post.’
“I saw what he was after, but I couldn’t see how it would help. True enough, he could say that for political reasons he didn’t want a British Legation at Quito, and that he had bribed me to report against it and that I’d cleared out at once. But it didn’t help. He could say it—but there was no proof of the bribe and no proof of the story. It wouldn’t deceive a child, let alone Doña Clara.
“Still, the idea had possibilities, and I sat up in bed and considered them over the coffee. And then I saw how we could get out of the jam—he with honor and I with profit.
“I told him that the wisest thing was for me to take a bribe that everyone could see, and not to run away. Then he could tell his story and stand a chance of being believed.
“‘Give me land,’ I said to him straight. ‘I like your country and you and your friends. I’ll stay here. I’ll keep my mouth shut. And this is what will happen. Doña Clara will believe you, and so will Riobamba. Pennyfather and your own foreign ministry will say that there was never any proposal to appoint a British Minister and that the whole rumor is ridiculous—which is just what they’d have to say if it were true. And they won’t sound convincing, because there’s me and my land to prove that you paid a good price for something—if it wasn’t for refusing the British Legation, what was it for?’
“I felt a bit ashamed, for it sounded like blackmail. And in a way it was. Only I knew he wouldn’t take it so. And I meant just a house and a few acres. I never expected all this.”
Trevithick waved his hand apologetically around the polished beauties of the dining room.
“But Anastasio was wild with gratitude. It’s funny, but do you know I think he was complimented that I wanted to live in his country—quite apart from the fact that I’d shown him a way out of the mess. He threw a dressing gown at me, and ran me down to the library, where he pulled out all his deeds and maps and photographs. I tell you, he might have conquered the country himself, he was so generous with it.
“What he offered at first wasn’t what I wanted. He kept on insisting on coffee and cocoa and quinine and all the things I could grow that would make me rich. I told him that I was sick of trying to make money, that I wanted to settle down. Then he showed me this place. I could see it was pretty much what I had dreamed of, but too big. I hadn’t any capital, I couldn’t stock it.
“‘I’ll make you a sporting offer, Jorge,’ he said. ‘Take the place as it stands. It’ll feed you and your men and keep a roof over your heads. And if you can’t make that estancia pay its own running expenses, then you’re an hijo de puta who ought to live in
the same back street as your mother.’
“I was short with him after that insult. I told him I’d forgotten more about grass farming than he ever knew, and I accepted the place. At nine o’clock he took me down to his lawyers and made out a deed of gift then and there—everything on the land movable and immovable, as they say. I couldn’t know it included this furniture and a volcano and the beginnings of the best dairy herd in Ecuador, could I?”
“No,” I answered. “But what did people say?”
“Exactly what I prophesied. And I called the ranch La Embajada to encourage them a bit. And those who didn’t believe our story started a rumor that Anastasio had bought me off because he didn’t dare let me travel on the same boat with his wife. So I had her portrait painted and hung it up to let them have a bit of evidence on their side as well. Of course that was long ago. I think everybody knows the real truth now—except Doña Clara.”
DELILAH OF THE BACK STAIRS
SUMMONED from his pantry by the buzzer, Widgeon put his head over the edge of the shaft and found that the delivery lift had come to rest three feet lower than his landing.
“Higher!” he called.
The unseen delivery boy wound a crank in the area, and the lift, like an inverted and continually disappointed guillotine, leapt savagely into the space where Mr. Widgeon’s head had been.
“The two whiskies is for you,” shouted a careless voice eight stories below. “Sign the book, please. The wine’s for Number Twenty-One. Give ’em a knock, mate, will yer?”
“Push Twenty-One’s button!” said Widgeon. “What do you think they’re for?”
He objected strongly to being called “mate” by an errand boy and disapproved of his laziness; the boy had only to take four steps and press the button in an orderly manner. Nevertheless Widgeon crossed the iron grille of the service landing and knocked on the back door of the opposite flat. He did not wish his neighbor, the cook of Number Twenty-One, to think that he was unwilling to do her a favor even if unnecessary.
The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories Page 7
