The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  Toby landed in England in October 1932 with some fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket, determined that he would no longer work simply and cynically for a living; it should not, he thought, be difficult to find a cause in which he could believe. By January he had seen that he could not choose his job. By March he was down to his last forty pounds. His parents were not in a position to be asked for help. Their savings had been wiped out in the general fall of stocks, and they lived on £300 a year in a country cottage where Mr Manning found perfect happiness among his books and Mrs Manning in acting at the tea tables of retired gentlefolk the part of an innocent martyr who had lost twenty times the capital they had actually possessed.

  In April Toby began to sell water softeners from door to door. His acceptance of this work made him more bitterly ashamed than his failure in New York. He was, he felt, worse than the unseemly prostitutes on Piccadilly. They merely offended against an artificial code of honour imposed on women by convention; he, just because he refused to face poverty and hunger, offended against a code imposed on himself by himself and founded on his own experience of life. And the job was too easy. For a trained and intelligent businessman to persuade a housewife to buy a water softener was as simple, if one did not mind occasional rebuffs, as for a pretty little hussy to pick up a genial drunk. He was depressed by the mass who obeyed, involuntary as the galvanised legs of a dead frog, the statistics in the sales manager’s office which faithfully prophesied the credulity, the snobbery and the unreasoning sense of inferiority of the great public. Toby earned £30 commission in five weeks and left. It was a long month and a half later that he ran into Bendrihem.

  Manuel Vargas brought the enchilada and a bottle of manzanilla. Toby ate it and worked his way through the angulas, the churrasco and the wines with sensuous enjoyment. He liked a dish to have strong and definite flavour. Even a mess of goat, rice and bananas, if it were well and simply cooked, could send him into ecstasies. The hygienic cuisine of the United States, which he contemptuously dismissed as a lot of damned salads, had given him agonies of indigestion.

  When he had finished his Mendoza claret, the restaurant was empty. He caught the waiter’s eye and called for coffee and a brandy.

  “Will you have a brandy with me?” he asked when Manuel had brought them. “That was an extraordinarily good meal.”

  Manuel Vargas accepted, and made his first conventional gesture as a waiter when he appeared to be about to drink his brandy standing.

  “Sit down!” said Toby. “You’re not in a hurry to get home, are you?”

  “Thank you,” Manuel answered, slipping into the opposite chair. “How was the manzanilla with enchiladas?”

  “They went very well together. What do they drink with enchiladas in Mexico?”

  “Anything. They know a lot about eating in Mexico, but nothing much about drinking. So much of the country is tropical, you see, and the tropics don’t lend themselves to a good table.”

  “Do you know Mexico well?”

  “I lived there, mostly in the north, for nearly two years,” answered Manuel. “And when I left I had to walk—which showed me the west too.”

  “Had to walk?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t use the trains. It served me right. I’d been one of Lara’s communists in my time and we made plenty of our fellow citizens walk. We used to dynamite the railways.”

  “Good God!”

  “It shocks you?”

  “No! Not at a distance, any way. It’s comforting to think that there still are such people in these days of commerce. I’ve talked to no one but women and businessmen for the last six weeks.”

  “Business? I thought you were an engineer,” Manuel said. “Or a diplomat, perhaps. I like to guess the trade of our customers. May I ask what your business is?”

  “Toys. Hanson & Crane Ltd.”

  “Toys!” exclaimed Manuel Vargas delightedly.

  “I don’t see that it’s worse than anything else,” said Toby, rather annoyed. “Why the devil shouldn’t I sell toys? It’s better than peddling dirty postcards or water softeners. What’s the matter with toys?”

  “Nothing!” said Manuel. “Nothing at all, amigo! You misunderstood me. I was amused at a coincidence. Does your firm make toy trains?”

  “It does.”

  “I knew it! I can see those crates now. I knew it! I’d swear the name on them was Hanson & Crane!”

  “What crates?”

  “Did you ever lose a consignment of toys in a Mexican railway accident?”

  “Never. I’ve been through all the Mexican accounts. I should have noticed it if we had.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter!” answered Manuel, losing none of his enthusiasm. “I felt I had known you somewhere when you came in. I hadn’t. I hadn’t even met your toys. Still, there’s half a coincidence. The last time I ever blew up a train with Lara, there were toys all over the place. Toys and a bidet. We know each other.”

  “I’ll understand some time,” Toby laughed.

  “You’ll understand now. Can you drink a bottle of brandy?”

  “I can drink half a bottle of brandy.”

  Manuel got up from the table with a low chuckle, and vanished into the interior of the restaurant. He returned a minute later without his apron, but with a bottle of Chilean brandy and a hat.

  “The cook’s gone home,” he said. “Let’s shut this place up and go and drink the bottle elsewhere. You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not. You must be sick of the sight of it.”

  “I am!”

  Manuel Vargas put the bottle in his pocket, pulled his black felt hat over his eyes and locked up. The Englishman interested him; his courtesy had invited some response; his air of freedom allowed the response to be natural. And then the toys. It was a sort of challenge. He welcomed this Toby Manning as a somewhat sceptical castaway might welcome a new arrival on his desert island. They probably had nothing in common, but he was compelled to find out whether they had or not.

  They strolled towards the centre of the town. The places of amusement near the harbour did not tempt them. The glory had departed from Valparaiso with the fall of nitrate prices, and the once famous joints had become seamen’s cafés, too noisy for anything but plain hard drinking. As for the Viña del Mar Casino, it was three miles away, and an embarrassing spot for two men—one of them a waiter—to drink their own bottle of brandy. The thin Pacific drizzle began to shroud the streets and a brightly lit door in the distance became instantly more inviting. It was guarded by a porter in a mangy orange uniform and flanked by photographs of the current variety turns, all of them plainly inefficient.

  “Shall we go in?” Toby suggested.

  “If you like. It’s very cheap and we can order a bottle of wine and not drink it. Do you want a woman?”

  “Not particularly, unless there is something very good-looking. And then it means sitting here till four in the morning.”

  “There’s no need to wait till they go home,” said Manuel. “They’ll oblige you on the premises.”

  The Cabaret Alcázar was decorated in the worst possible taste. A line of boxes ran round three sides of the hall, roofed over and separated one from another by crimson trellises. Wound into the trellises were paper flowers which had evidently endured the atmosphere of smoke and stale scent for years, but nevertheless had preserved the appalling vivacity of their mauves, magentas and oriental blues. They sat down in one of these underground summerhouses and ordered a bottle of Chilean Riesling for the good of the house. The chairs were cheap, honest and hard.

  “You remind me of the Russians who run restaurants in Europe,” said Toby. “What are you doing as a waiter?”

  “Waiting for the angel of the annunciation,” answered Manuel.

  “Doesn’t sound like you! I can imagine you hiding from the angel, but not waiting for him—or is it her?”
>
  “Neutral. Like cut cats and cabaret girls.”

  “Not much neutrality about that!” Toby laughed, nodding towards a female whose shapeless and primitive masses so spread her frock of baby-blue satin that it shone like steel.

  “She’s neutral in spirit,” said Vargas. “As neutral as a bucket going to and from the tap. My angel of the annunciation is neutral materially. It might be you. You don’t come on any business, but you come with signs and portents.”

  “I don’t see it. We know some of the same places. And toys—”

  “Illogical. Casual. Yes! Have you ever picked a volunteer from twenty men with no knowledge of them but what you see in their faces?”

  “I can’t say I ever have.”

  “Well then, you won’t understand.”

  “I’ve lived too quiet a life. You think I’d be a good hand with dynamite?”

  The woman in pale blue, seeing the foreigner’s humorously puzzled face and imagining that he was asking his companion’s advice on how to approach her, put her arms round his neck and kissed him. Toby, who loathed cheap scent and was as sensitive to ugliness in women as to their beauty, gallantly suppressed his impulse to be rude.

  “Later!” he said. “Later! We’re talking business.”

  “My name is Rosario,” said the lady royally. “I shall sit down.”

  “Can you?” asked Manuel.

  “Naturally,” she answered. “It stretches.”

  She sat down. The pale-blue satin bulged and spread but did not break; since she wore no corset, it gave to the rolls and creases of fat like a second skin.

  “Take five pesos!” said Manuel. “You have earned them. And now run along, Rosario.”

  “Can’t I stay with you? You are very sympathetic.”

  “Later! We’re talking business—an important contract!”

  The woman pouted and left. She had switched the conversation into Spanish. Manuel poured two glasses of brandy and continued in that language. His English, long unused, was good enough for everyday purposes but carried with difficulty the deep current of his personal thoughts.

  “You asked me,” he said, “why I was a waiter. And I ask you—why do you sell toys? Each one does what he can in the world, isn’t it true?”

  “Yes, but at least a salesman has more comfort and money than a waiter. I say that only because you could be a far better salesman than I.”

  “Comfort and money are not essential to me. I have been happiest when I had neither. Haven’t you?”

  “No,” replied Toby truthfully. “I haven’t. But I was never meant for an adventurer. I’ve never loved a job enough to be indifferent to comfort.”

  “What happened to your youth?”

  “I amused myself—but not in my work. You, you must have often loved your work.”

  “Yes,” said Manuel. “But it was illusion. Now I have grown out of illusions. So what does it matter if I wait? I respect food and the service of it. And respect is the next best thing to love.”

  “But you are not the type,” insisted Toby obstinately.

  “Nor are you the type of travelling salesman. You were probably intended for a diplomat—or one of your English colonial administrators.”

  “God forbid! Do you see me leaving cards in order of precedence, or beating blacks because they won’t pay taxes?”

  “No. But no more do I see myself in commerce. It is too empty. Now you understand why I wait for the angel of the annunciation.”

  “I begin to feel like the angel,” said Toby. “But I think it’s the brandy.”

  “And the dinner. My profession is to make men feel like angels. That is why I am moderately content.”

  Toby laughed.

  “Suppose I offered you your choice of profession?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t answer you. I’ve had money and I’ve had power. I’ve done most of what our present civilisation requires a man to do, and if I died to-night I should have had a complete life. Yet I am only thirty-nine. I want an object, not a way of supporting myself.”

  “If the angel were a Christian one,” said Toby, “it would probably tell you to do good to your fellow men.”

  “I do,” Manuel answered. “Or have you got indigestion?”

  Two girls stood laughing at the beflowered entrance to the box. They were arm in arm, and that evidence of friendship gave them an air of normality which contrasted with the spurious affectations of the cabaret. Both were young. One, to judge by her accent and the sulky pride of her bearing, was Spanish. The other was from one of the Andean republics to the north, for her dusky skin was proof that she had more Indian blood than white. Figure and face were squat, but youthful. Toby was attracted by the gentle depths of her eyes and the two breaking waves of jet-black hair that framed her face.

  “Shall we ask them to sit down?” he said to Vargas in English.

  “Later!”

  Manuel looked round the room for the overflowing woman who had first approached them, caught her eye and smiled.

  “We have already invited one,” he said to the girls. “She is coming now.”

  Rosario rolled her tightly swaddled charms across the floor. The two girls laughed at her provocatively, but prudently removed themselves before she could spray them with the jets of her experienced vocabulary.

  “Do you want her?” asked Toby, surprised.

  “For protection,” Manuel answered. “If she sits down, she’ll keep the rest away. And I want to talk.”

  “I’ll ask a friend,” said Rosario, sitting down. “Then we shall be a happy party.”

  “Don’t ask anybody,” replied Manuel, patting her hand. “Drink this bottle or whatever the house expects you to drink. We like to look at you. It is all we want. We are perverse.”

  Used to the unaccountable whims of the other sex, the girl sat down at the back of the box and looked proudly around her. It was satisfying to think that her day was not yet past—that there were still real men in the world who liked a decent covering of flesh.

  “The little mestiza rather pleased me,” said Toby regretfully. “There was something honest and earthy about her.”

  “Earthy?” asked Manuel Vargas, who did not recognise this as a word of praise.

  “The earth. A reality,” Toby explained. “Perhaps the only reality. May not our only true destiny in life be the earth, Don Manuel?”

  “Of course it is,” replied Manuel, as if he could not see how the other doubted it. “Of course the earth gives happiness. But a man must be born to it. That you or I could be content working the earth with our hands is impossible. We need leisure. The earth gives happiness but no leisure.”

  “You know and I don’t. It’s because you’re a Latin, I suppose. The earth is a birth right to you and a luxury to me. It is always a marvel to me that if a man works a field he needs no drugs.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Mental drugs. The ideas that we feed to ourselves in order that we may not be discontented. Some men don’t need them. The farmer and peasant don’t; nor do the artist and the scientist. To show you what I mean, I’ll tell you the drug that keeps me going. I pretend to myself that I am expanding English commerce and that my toys bring pleasure into thousands of horrid little overfed lives. Most of us need some kind of similar nonsense. The businessman must excuse his money grubbing, the politician his dishonesty, the journalist his lies.”

  “You’re only considering parasites,” said Manuel. “What about the soldier or the explorer?”

  “The most unblushing drug addicts! Their craving for excitement rules their lives.”

  Manuel smiled and watched the Englishman as if he listened with his eyes.

  “But you can’t say that painting is a drug to a Goya or pure mathematics to an Einstein,” Toby went on. “Their work is a fulfilment. The artist and the scientist
and, I think, the farmer know a content that we can never know. You seem to get along without drugs, and I’m pretty near, myself, to reforming. My managing director would probably call it lack of confidence—bless his innocent heart!”

  “We’ve neither of us suggested woman,” said Manuel.

  “Why should we? Woman isn’t a drug. She’s a joy. A luxury. A natural pleasure. She makes it easier for us to take our drugs. She pats us on the back and calls us children. Loves us for our infantile pretences. So she ought! They provide the home for her. Suppose I had a wife and children and loved them, I could easily persuade myself that selling toys was a worth-while life and that my ambition was to be managing director of Hanson & Crane. Have you ever been married?”

  “Yes. She died in childbirth. While it lasted, it was good.”

  Toby left a moment of silence. It was evident from the simplicity of Manuel’s answer that he had once been deeply hurt.

  “Perhaps I underrate marriage.”

  “I know you do. It is natural and satisfying—like tilling the soil. It makes drugs unnecessary. The founding of a family is a fulfilment in itself.”

  “My God! You’re more Latin than I thought, Don Manuel!”

  “Cómo no? I believe in the family. But I shall never have one, so why worry?”

  “It’s odd,” said Toby. “We reject commerce. We know we should get sick of manual labour. We don’t want a family. We don’t want money and we don’t want power. Why the hell don’t we kill ourselves?”

  “That,” said Rosario, “is just what I was asking myself.”

  “Do you want to know?” asked Manuel. “Yet you do not kill yourself and you are unhappy.”