Days of Your Fathers (19 page)

‘
“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 honourable 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 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 station-master. “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 realised 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 pencilled 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:

‘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 and the vice-president were on board, and at each little station there was a crowd to welcome us. I've never travelled 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 was 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 realise 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 that 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 into 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 hangover 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 coffee-pot 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 that 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 honour 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 rumour 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 the 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 moveable and immoveable 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 rumour 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.'

No Police in the Cemetery

The return of the Conde de Villanueva to his ancestral home had not been as gay and pleasurable as he expected. In his little town of Lazalaya, in the sun-striped Café Moderno to which he had looked forward through months of darkened New York bars, even in the office of the mayor who had always treated him with a fatherly affection in which there was no room for formal respect, he had been received with cold courtesy. Added to that, there was upon his desk a note from the Civil Governor of the Province demanding his immediate presence.