The Three Sentinels

by Geoffrey Household

  Mrs. Gateson was delightfully hospitable and hard as nails—more like a practised army wife, he thought, than an oil wife. She talked London. She knew the Gunners and was cautiously amusing at their expense. Then she brought up the nervous Mrs. Birenfield who had been such a dear, close friend. Mat was aware of being summed up as a possible collaborator.

  ‘What did you think of your chauffeur?’ she asked.

  It was a curious question. He couldn’t have any worthwhile impression as yet. He had only shaken Lorenzo’s hand and passed a few cordial remarks. His driver was a pure Indian of the round-headed, rather Mongolian type, as imposingly correct as a hired butler and a lot more silent. At a guess, he was not intelligent; on the other hand, judging by his appearance and that of the managerial car, he was very conscientious.

  ‘Makes me feel like a millionaire,’ Mat said.

  She let that go, revealing nothing of her own opinion if she had one, and turned him over to Pilar Alvarez—charming, efficient and perhaps a Ministry spy. But never mind that! He was glad she was a woman of the country, not a machine import.

  With the coffee the rush started. Faces, faces. Shaking hands and trying to say the right thing—a different right thing—to everybody. After an hour of it he was let off, to be driven home by Lorenzo. The man could be talked at for a year and still leave little impression. Yet Mrs. Gateson must have had some reason for mentioning him. She was a much cleverer person than her husband.

  The police post at his gate at least showed its presence and saluted. There was no sign of the machine gun. It was probably sited behind a low wall from which an appetising smell of fish stew was wafted into the car. A typically bloody fool place commanding only the approach to the house. Anyone who chose to crawl down from the hillside and into the cover of a higher terrace could—if merciful—plug one neat shot into the stew pot and the fight would be over.

  Pepe hovered hospitably. His wife Amelia—and Don Mateo’s cook very much at his service—would like to know what he preferred for breakfast. Coffee, he replied, and fresh rolls and—could there be a papaya in the larder? Pepe did not know but pronounced that there would certainly be iced papaya on the table at 8 a.m. Through the weary years of London papaya had become a symbol of sun and birds and the fresh heat of morning. It gave him immense pleasure that there would be papaya. The General Manager admitted that Mat had never quite grown up.

  He did not go to bed, knowing that sleep would be impossible until his brain began to drift away from the problems of this community which depended on him. With all lights out, he rested in a deck chair on the verandah, enfolded by the soft darkness in which so many of his nights had been passed, the benevolent successor of the heat. Dream and daydream became hardly distinguishable. Closed eyes or open eyes, one was back—didn’t they say?—in the womb. And a damned nice place it would be, too, very like a moonless tropic night with stars—the stars that were to be—covered by sea mist or monsoon cloud.

  The silence was absolute. The first ridge cut off the sound of the surf and such night noises as there might be in the town—a traditional little town, not at all badly done by architects who stuck to the old ways. Dave Gunner’s home from home. Wonder what he would make of it, especially if a cockroach dropped down his collar from the roof of the colonnade. Probably he’d have the whole place replanned in little boxes to save such humiliation for Labour.

  Yes, there was that noise again. A faint, neat plop. There must have been an earlier, half-noticed plop which put the image of Sir Dave into his head. Rats? Lizards? But they scuttered; they didn’t plop. Scorpions? Well, you might get one falling off the terrace, but not a procession. Seagull roosting? Could be, but it must be pretty constipated. Plop!

  He got up very quietly and looked over the rail of the verandah at the dark masses of the unfamiliar garden. Again he heard the sound and saw dimly a little spurt of silver. So one of the small, open places was a pool. Fish jumping for mosquitoes? But wrong noise. Fish splashed.

  He crossed the stretch of lawn below the house with a caution which seemed absurd when he was merely satisfying curiosity. Whatever the alarmists thought, he was sure there would be no attempt to intimidate him while the field was still doubtful of his character and intentions. Still, it was always wiser to see without being seen.

  At the edge of the pool a small boy lay on his belly with a hand in the water, utterly absorbed. He quickly withdrew his hand, examined the fish he had caught and tossed it back. Mat crept on till there was only a large fern between him and the boy’s heels. He tried to remember the Spanish for ‘tickling trout’ and came to the conclusion that he had never known. Not that these were trout. They were some globular and decorative little fish. Fascinated, he continued to watch, then stepped accidentally on a loose stone and showed himself at once.

  ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter so long as you put them back.’

  The child jumped to his feet, standing still as a boy of bronze at the edge of the pool. Defiant, too, as any little animal which hadn’t a chance of escape and knew it. His hand clutched the pocket of his dirty trousers.

  ‘It wouldn’t stay alive in your pocket,’ Mat said.

  But perhaps he was hungry. No, that wouldn’t do. The fish looked inedible; and any way he had been catching them and throwing them back.

  ‘Do you come here often?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just to play with the fish?’

  ‘I was waiting,’ the boy replied indignantly, as if play were quite out of the question.

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘No one.’

  Odd! He looked as guilty as if he had just walked off with all the silver. Waiting for an accomplice, perhaps. Small boys were often used for unlawful entry.

  ‘Listen, little friend! Let me see what you have there!’

  The boy, too proud to be searched, pulled out a stick of toffee wrapped in grease-proof paper. Mat took it from him. Toffee be damned! It was a half pound stick of gelignite.

  He ran his hands over the two cotton garments and discovered nothing else but a box of matches. Inexplicable! Who the devil would send a child out with half a pound of explosives and matches—in the same pocket, too? Answer: nobody. It was the little monkey’s own plan, own mischief.

  ‘Why are you carrying this about with you?’

  ‘Because I am a man.’

  ‘That can be seen,’ Mat replied courteously. ‘But what were you waiting for?’

  ‘I saw the fish on my way.’

  Very natural to be distracted by fish in a pool at seven or eight or whatever he was.

  ‘On your way to where?’

  ‘To you.’

  Desperation. Enmity. What stuff to find in this innocent, sharp voice! Nothing made sense. But, yes, it did! Thought a bomb was like a firework. He was going to light his stick and throw it.

  ‘You would just have burned yourself horribly. It wouldn’t have gone off.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I will show you. Then you can blow me up better next time.’

  ‘You are not calling for the police?’

  ‘There is no need for the police between valientes.’

  ‘That is what my father says.’

  ‘Who is your father?’

  ‘Rafael Garay.’

  The blackish leader of the boycott with whom he had shaken hands that very evening. The name had stuck in memory, for he had read it in reports at the London office and heard it again at the Ministry. The man and his dead wife both seemed to be remarkable characters.

  ‘What’s he going to say about this?’

  Silence.

  ‘You thought he would be pleased?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘No. No, it hasn’t, son. You are right.’

  It passed through his mind that Rafael Garay could have sent the boy. But that was unthinkable. The little idiot had stolen his stick of gelignite somewhere and set off on his heroic adventure with ri
diculous ideas of his own on how it should be used.

  ‘You must wash your hands at once,’ he said. ‘Then you can stick your finger up your nose.’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘It’s of no importance. There are grown men who do it.’

  ‘My mother said there are not.’

  No arguing with that! Mother’s word was considered as coming down from Sinai.

  ‘At Cabo Desierto there are not. But in Europe there are very respectable men who rabbit around in their noses.’

  ‘It is a dirty habit,’ the boy quoted solemnly.

  ‘You are right. It is a dirty habit.’

  ‘I do it when I think.’

  ‘Come and wash your hands quickly and your nose too! If you don’t, that stuff could give you an awful headache.’

  He put a light hand on the boy’s arm so that he could not run away and led him to the bathroom, motioning to him to be quiet. Taps and shower and steaming water made the small amateur assassin very tense—like a man entering some sinister, ultra-modern surgery, Mat supposed. But he obediently washed hands and nostrils.

  ‘And now are you ready for the lesson?’ Mat asked, leading him back to the garden.

  ‘It is enough.’

  ‘Don’t you want to learn how to make a bang safely?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to. I know what lesson you are going to teach me.’

  It seemed unnatural for a boy to refuse and to be so frightened. One must use a bit of imagination and put oneself in his place. Man from the moon. Out of another world. Why didn’t you beat him up or send for the police? Got it! Because you’re going to teach him a lesson yourself. Throw a bomb at me, would you? Right! So we’ll see how you like it when that stick is under your backside.

  ‘You think I’m going to blow you to blazes, son? Have some sense and remember I too was a child!’

  ‘True?’ he asked with as much amazement as if the General Manager claimed to have been born from a boiled egg.

  ‘True as I stand here. And also I did not have a mother very long.’

  ‘Did you have a father like mine?’

  ‘It could be. Yes.’

  He was surprised by his own sincere answer. What the hell was there in common between a militant black carpenter at Cabo Desierto and an earnest, kindly Fabian in Hampstead who wouldn’t hurt a fly? Perhaps Rafael Garay also walked over hills with his son and talked to him as if he were an equal.

  ‘Why did the Company kill my mother?’

  ‘I have heard that your mother gave her life for other women.’

  ‘My father says it was the Company.’

  ‘That is a manner of speaking. If you had killed me, it could be said that the Company did.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘The Company made your father angry. Your father made you angry. So you took vengeance on me. So it is the fault of the Company which sent me here.’

  ‘Then everything is the fault of the whole world.’

  ‘Very true.’

  ‘But my mother is dead!’

  This was utterly unexpected. He had an overstrained, weeping child on his hands instead of a desperado. Only one thing to do. Who was it said that the young of every mammal, due to a common softness of face, signalled for help to every other mammal? Probably got it wrong somewhere. Certainly not true for hyaenas and lambs. Well, an arm round his shoulders seemed to work here. Poor, little blighter! Rafael Garay was a lucky devil. And the boy had such command over his own terrified spirit, both while crawling through the darkness and when caught by this foreigner with an infinite power for evil.

  ‘What time do you go to bed?’

  ‘When I like.’

  ‘So your father will say nothing?’

  ‘He will ask where I have been.’

  ‘Well, you must never tell him a lie. Say that you came up here to have a look at me and stopped to play with the fish, which is true. Go away as you came and not past the police at the gate! Until we see each other again, and with God!’

  The child slipped instantly into the night. Nobody could vanish quicker than a small boy who had been unexpectedly let off, and quite right too. Get the hell out before the boss changes his mind! Mat strolled back to the pool and buried the stick of jelly under a damp stone. Then he had a go at the fish himself. Couldn’t catch one! Cunning little hands were much nearer to nature than General Manager’s.

  The comic, complex encounter was unexpectedly restful. He slept well. Papaya was up to the highest remembered standard, the question of lunch confidently left to Amelia. Lorenzo, preserving his sergeant-on-parade solemnity drove him down to his office. Cartoon of a capitalist. He only needed a top hat and a cigar.

  He was greeted by Pilar Alvarez and decided that in the office she looked as a private secretary ought to look—statuesque, well-groomed, with fine, brown eyes. At a guess, she modelled herself on, say, a minor New York executive, but her warmth was not so standardised. She showed him the files and explained existing routine. After half an hour of it he asked half-humorously:

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘I am paid to be on yours, Mr. Darlow,’ she answered as if he had accused her of disloyalty.

  A silly, impulsive question it had been. What the devil had he expected her to say? He should have waited a whole intimate office week before probing.

  ‘My shorthand conversation. You’ll soon get used to reading it. What I meant was: do you see any solution that we foreigners don’t?’

  ‘At present only force.’

  ‘Colonels required?’

  ‘They are all glad you were one yourself.’

  She said ‘they’ not ‘we’, so after all she did not wholly identify herself with the Company. It would be interesting to know why not. Pride perhaps.

  ‘What do you think Mr. Thorpe would be doing now?’

  ‘His inventory probably.’

  ‘Good Lord! Why?’

  ‘None of them like being idle.’

  ‘What sort of man is he?’

  ‘Very English.’

  It was the first unpuzzled smile she had given him. Evidently she liked Thorpe. On the field anything was forgiven to a man of marked character whatever his failings in tact and temperament.

  ‘Could we tell him to drop it and come up here now?’

  ‘We could.’

  And another of those smiles for himself. But he would have to be careful with her. He sensed a slight contempt for the men, the Company and the whole god-awful mess. On the other hand he had no doubt that she could run the correspondence with London and the Ministry nearly on her own, stalling both of them while he got down to essentials.

  ‘See if you can get him, and meanwhile fill up this empty desk with all the stuff I must see and whatever you think I oughtn’t to!’

  Paper words. Business words. No opinion that was not hedged. There was nothing factual and incisive except from the would-be strong men like Gateson who chose their own facts. He was thankful when Ray Thorpe plunged into the office: short, thick, reliable, intelligent so far as he went. And you will not, he told himself, assume how far he goes. You’re the General Manager, not Gypsy Petulengro.

  ‘Tell me what happened. They all talk round it like a cat with a scorpion. How the hell did those women get lost?’

  ‘Well, sir, you don’t know the track.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Road, rail—we couldn’t afford either of them then, but we surveyed routes for the lot before it was decided to stick to water transport.’

  ‘They cleared out along the beach at dusk and no one knew a thing till nearly midday. The tide had covered their trail by then.’

  ‘Launch?’

  ‘At once. And a land party. But no sign of them by nightfall. They had twenty hours’ start. The chaps camped and were up before dawn, sure of finding them for they’d be exhausted after marching at that pace. But still nothing. Half the party with all the water kept up the search. The rest beat it back here.’

  ‘W
hat did Birenfield do?’

  ‘Wired for troops, aircraft, the lot. But that took time. At our end he gave up.’

  ‘So you went.’

  ‘Took a mule pulling fifty gallons of water and our portable wireless. Four of my best men came along and Catalina Garay. The women would listen to her. We knew that.’

  ‘And your wife, I hear.’

  ‘Had to have another woman.’

  The brusque reply inhibited any more questions on that subject. But the keep-off sign did not, Mat decided, imply that Mrs. Thorpe had shown any unwillingness. Just the opposite. There was an enviable partnership so intimate that strangers were not admitted.

  The women had entered the track all right, but lost their heads when they thought it was leading them too far inland. Their only guide to the Capital was the coast. So they turned off to the south along a tempting bit of plateau—easy walking, Thorpe said, but so hard that a bulldozer wouldn’t have left any trace let alone bare feet. Then they had to march across the lay of the country, up and over bald ridges stripped by trickling gravel and the sun. Up and over. Now waterless and far gone they staggered down to the sea. There was no kindly beach offering a route to the south, only a small cove where the canyon ended at the surf.

  ‘Never saw such a bloody awful place! Yellow death behind you, white death ahead of you. Christ!’

  Clinging close to the half-shade of wet rocks, as if they had been the missing husbands damp with loving sweat, the women had properly bitched the searching plane. Bitched the tracked vehicles of the army, too, which dutifully covered impossible valleys. Meanwhile Thorpe’s party found them, led by the chance of an empty can shining in the sun. Beyond the next ridge they came on the corpse of a child with a little gravel scratched over it. After that it was easy for Catalina to guess how the minds of the women had worked.

  There in the cove they were—seventeen of them dead and the rest giving the children the cream of the sea foam to drink when they cried. Thorpe signalled back his approximate position and kept a column of smoke going which was bound to be seen off shore.