by Jack Tollers
Chapter Five
Duc in altum
Apparently the power cut was over. They huddled into the brightly lit kitchen, Veronica and Victoria prattling away in chaotic chit chat, warming coffee while Peter and Jimmy dried themselves with towels that Victoria had promptly brought from upstairs. Thomas was seated at the kitchen table fastidiously cleaning his shoes with a bit of newspaper while he listened to the girls chattering away.
Peter shivered with fright. He had been quickly introduced to Victoria and—because she was now unspectacled—it was only when he shook hands with her that he actually recognised her. At the same time, he was relieved when she made no sign of recognising him. All the same he trembled with a mixture of cold feet, a dizziness that made him feel half-sick and traces of the same elated feelings that had aroused him that very morning. The same girl, in the same clothes, on the same day. The strange coincidence made him feel a queer flutter in his guts, the fortuity of this new encounter making him suspicious about this new turn of affairsan inkling that someone was pulling the strings of his life without much misgivings. He was bemused.
So was Jimmy. Apparently the struggle with Thomas, the muddy business of trying to heave the car out of the ditch and the walk back under the rain hadn't entirely sobered him. But, eyeing a bottle of Scotch on top of the fridge he rose to the occasion, got up and served himself a good measure and began looking around the place in search of a bottle of soda. He finally settled for a jug of water that Victoria offered him and sat down heavily in front of his friends.
‘So!’ he exclaimed boisterously, ‘So!’
‘So what?’ Thomas asked.
‘So we're all under arrest aren't we? Nobody moves. This is, so to speak, some kind of meteorological prison, don't you know?’ he rhetorically asked while having a swig at the booze, ‘All the same, I must admit that I've seen worse prisons than this one,’ he stage-whispered while eyeing Victoria's back with a mischievous grin.
Fortunately Victoria hadn't heard, but Peter felt uncomfortable with his friend’s drivel and tried to catch his friend's attention with a nudge. In vain; Jimmy was sufficiently drunk as to notice nothing. The girls joined the table handing around cups of coffee which were greedily accepted by all except Jimmy who disdainfully ignored the black stuff holding on to his drink with exaggerated unction.
Victoria explained her surprising presence in Bella Vista to Veronica. Apparently her old grandma had caught her despondently listening to the wireless and in a sudden bout of generosity had called her taxi-chauffeur, one Mr. Rossi, who agreed to take the girl back home—at an outrageous price.
‘But of course,’ Victoria winsomely smiled at Peter who felt he was shrinking by the second, ‘by the time we got to the Panamericana it was raining like hell,’ the girl cleared her forehead with a quick gesture, ‘which was a good thing all in all, considering that Mr. Rossi stopped his dreadful soccer-talk and concentrated on his driving. Even so, I never thought that the party would be over just because of the rain. Most times people continue the binge inside.’ Victoria got up to get another cup of coffee while she added: ‘I was quite prepared to go to sleep when I heard you calling from the gate.’
Then Veronica proceeded to tell Victoria about their crazy drive through Bella Vista's muddy streets and Victoria laughed gaily at the girl's description of the place where they had got stuck. Peter listened in a daze, feeling he was somehow being driven farther up and further into unchartered territory. Also, he couldn’t quite suppress his suspicion that Victoria's melodious laugh would probably ring in his heart for a long time to come.
The girl went on and on, unaware of the storm she was concocting. ‘Actually,’ she told Thomas, while lighting one of her black cigarettes, ‘that boulevard is one of the worst in town. That turn of yours was a bad move. You had only to carry straight on and eventually you would have found your way back to Buenos Aires.’
Thomas explained Jimmy's contribution to the general chaos by breaking the windshield lever and they all laughed when he mimicked his own driving position—half inside the car, half out. Victoria found this particularly funny and laughed once again sending renewed shivers up Peter's spine.
They were quite at ease in the kitchen half lighted by a flickering candle, the storm raging outside with all its might, five youngsters chatting away about this and that over their coffees and cigarettes. Peter nudged Jimmy again with the intention of conveying the urgent message that he wanted to get through over Victoria's identity, but his friend, this time detecting some bother at his side, simply drew apart.
‘What the hell do you keep nudging me for?’
Peter mumbled inarticulate sounds. Fortunately the girls didn’t actually hear this as they began to figure out where they could put the boys up for the night, having decided that getting help for the car at that time of the night with the storm still raging, was out of the question.
Jimmy helped himself to another whisky and began to sing an inspired version of ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’ until Veronica told him to shut up, sisterly explaining that they were making enough noise as it was and that they risked rousing one of the children or something. Victoria shook her head and told them that you could hardly hear a thing from upstairs and that, in any case, everyone was used to noisy night gatherings in that kitchen. ‘We had Poker on Thursday,’ she added, ‘and Daddy surprised us all by coming in at six in the morning in his dreadful dressing gown, just as I was dealing the last hand.’ From the girl's story it was quite clear that there had been no reprimand, and quite on the contrary, the old professor had offered to make coffee for the mixed company. ‘It was only then that we discovered that it was already dawning,’ she said with that low laugh of hers that Peter was beginning to get familiar with. He smiled at her dumbly and it was then that Jimmy, with typical alcoholic shrewdness, caught the full significance of his friend's wane expression.
Thomas had begun to recite his Lucas Padilla's sonnet again, but he was interrupted by Jimmy who suddenly started off a new line of conversation.
‘The Army is getting on Peter's nerves, don't you know?’ And before anybody could stop him, he retold the whole story of Peter's encounter that very morning with the girl of his life. No amount of nudging could stop him. He pointed at his friend with a malicious grin and asked him again about the magic of that girl in a lovely kilt, the charm he was subjected to that had made him actually follow her through Buenos Aires’s streets in that most uncharacteristic manner. Peter looked down at his coffee while Veronica started to ask Jimmy for more details about this story which was completely new to her.
Peter just looked down at his coffee, blushing like a schoolgirl and muttering the most dreadful menaces against his big-mouthed and irresponsible friend.
Nobody noticed that Victoria was blushing too.
But the situation was somehow saved by the most unexpected circumstance as suddenly the door opened and Father Mole appeared in the kitchen in what looked like a hell of a temper.
‘What do you all think you’re doing at this hour of the night? I need to get a bit of sleep you know...’
The subsequent homily to the young bunch was ringed with forceful expressions he usually reserved for his flock on the darker days of Lent. After he had retired to the guest room, not before closing the kitchen door with pointed tardiness, Thomas stood on his stool using it as a pulpit and began to silently mimic the priest's gestures with great effect, sending the whole party laughing in a smothered way which only added to the general hilarity.
It was only then that Peter dared to give Victoria a quick look. To his amazement she wasn't laughing but was instead looking back at him with a reflective face. He blushed again with this stupid smile he couldn't get off his face and swore for the hundredth time that he would strangle Jimmy as soon as he could get his hands on him.
Just then Thomas suddenly fell from the stool with a crashing noise that sent everyone into a renewed attack of not so smothered laugh
ter. Jimmy made the sign of the cross on the mute door beyond which the cleric had retired, all of which made matters worse, and then spilt his whisky, which sent Veronica into new fits of laughter.
They were young, and on the merry side.
Outside, the storm was reaching its climax and the trees swayed dangerously this way and that with strong winds, the rain lashing against the windowpanes, drumming constantly on the roof gutter. Anyone peeping through the window would have had a certain difficulty in identifying the youngsters having the time of their lives in that dim light. But the scene would have required a really keen-sighted observer to notice in the middle of that hobbledehoyish gathering—with Jimmy hooting with laughter and Thomas giving renewed versions of Father's Mole homily—that Peter and Victoria remained serious, as serious as you can get.
