The Honorary Consul (6 page)

       "Where's the Consulate? Is it the next turning on the left?"

       "Yes, but we could take the second or third just as well and make a little turn. I enjoy your company, doctor. What did you say your name was?"

       "Plarr."

       "Do you know what my name is?"

       "Yes."

       "Mason."

       "I thought..."

       "That's what they called me at school. Mason. Fortnum and Mason, the inseparable twins. It was the best English school In B. A. My career though was less than distinguished. A good word to get out so distinct... so well. The right measure you see. Not too much and not too little. I was never a prefect, and the marble team was the only one I made. Not recognized officially. We were a snobbish school. All the same the headmaster, not the one I knew, that was Arden—we called him Smells—well, this new man wrote me a letter of congratulation when I became Honorary Consul. I wrote to him first, of course, and told him the glad news, so I suppose he couldn't very well ignore me altogether."

       "Will you tell me when we get to the Consulate?"

       "We've passed it, old man, but never you mind. I've got a clear head. You just take another turn. First to the right and then left again. I'm in the sort of mood when I could drive like this all night. In sympathetic company. No need to pay attention to the one-way signs. Diplomatic privilege. The CC on the car. I can talk to you, doctor, as I can talk to no other man in this city. Spaniards. A proud people but they have no sentiment. Not as we English know it. No sense of Home. Soft slippers, the feet on the table, the friendly glass, the ever-open door. Humphries is not a bad chap—he's as English as you or me, or is he Scotch?—but he has the soul of a—pedagogue. Another good word that. He always tries to correct my morals, and yet I don't do much that's wrong, not really wrong. Tonight, if I'm a little pissed, it was the fault of the glasses. What's your other name, doctor?"

       "Eduardo."

       "But I thought you were English?"

       "My mother's Paraguayan."

       "Call me Charley. Would you mind if I called you Ted?"

       "Call me what you like, but for God's sake tell me where the Consulate is."

       "The next corner. But don't go expecting too much. No marble halls, no chandeliers and potted palms. It's only a bachelor's digs—a bureau, a bedroom—all the usual offices, of course. The best the buggers at home are ready to provide. No sense of national pride. Penny wise, pound foolish. You must come out to my camp—that's where my real home is. Nearly a thousand acres. Eight hundred anyway. Some of the best maté In the country. We could drive there now—it's only three quarters of an hour from here. A good night's sleep and afterward—a hair of the dog. I can give you real Scotch."

       "Not tonight. I have patients to see in the morning."

       They stopped outside an old colonial house with Corinthian pillars; the white plaster gleamed in the moonlight. On the first floor a flagstaff projected and a shield bore the royal arms. Charley Fortnum swayed a little on the pavement, gazing up. "Is it true?" he asked.

       "Is what true?"

       "The flagstaff. Isn't it leaning over a bit too much?"

       "It looks all right to me."

       "I wish we had a simpler flag than the Union Jack. I hung it upside down once on the Queen's birthday. I could see nothing wrong with the bloody thing, but Humphries was angry—he said he was going to write to the Ambassador. Come up and have a glass."

       "I must be getting home—if you can manage by yourself."

       "I promise you it's real Scotch. I get Long John from the Embassy. They all prefer Haig there. But Long John gives you a free glass with every bottle. Very nice glasses, too, with the measures marked. Women, Men, and Shipmaster. I count myself, of course, a Shipmaster. I've got dozens of Long John glasses out at the camp. I like that name Shipmaster. Better than Captain which could be a mere military term."

       He had the classical difficulty with his key, but succeeded on his third attempt. Swaying on the doorstep he made a speech from under the Corinthian columns to Doctor Plarr who waited impatiently on the pavement for him to finish.

       "It's been a very agreeable evening, Ted, even if the goulash was damned awful. Good to speak occasionally the native tongue—gets rusty from unuse—the tongue that Shakespeare spoke. You mustn't think I'm always as happy as this, but it's the measure that counts. Moments of melancholy too when I'm glad of a friend's company. And remember any time you need a Consul, Charley Fortnum's only too happy to be of service. To any Englishman. Or Scotsman or Welshman for that matter. We all have something in common. All belong to the once United bloody Kingdom. Nationality's thicker than water, though that's a nasty term, when you think of it, thicker. Reminds you of things better forgotten and forgiven. Did they give you syrup of figs as a boy? Just walk straight up. Middle door on the first floor, but you can't miss the big brass plate. Wants so much polishing you wouldn't believe the hours of labor a brass plate needs. Grooming Fortnum's Pride is nothing to it." He slipped back into the dark hall behind, disappearing from sight.

       Doctor Plarr drove home to the new yellow block and the noise of gravel grating up the pipes and the whine of the rusty cranes. It seemed to him, as he lay in bed and tried to sleep, that in the years to come he was unlikely to find much in common with the Honorary Consul.

       ****

       Though Doctor Plarr was in no hurry to resume his acquaintance with Charles Fortnum, a month or two after their first encounter he received certain documents which had to be witnessed by a British Consul.

       His first attempt to see the Consul was not successful. He arrived at the Consulate about eleven in the morning. The Union Jack fluttered from the dubious pole in the hot dry wind from the Chaco. He wondered why it was flying at all, until he remembered that the day was the anniversary of the armistice of one world war before the last. He rang the bell and soon he felt sure that an eye was watching him through a spyhole in the door. He stood well back in the sunlight to be inspected, and immediately a small dark woman with a big nose snatched the door open. She stared at him with the intense preoccupied gaze of a bird of prey which was accustomed to watch a point from far off for indications of carrion; perhaps she was surprised to find the carrion so close and still alive. No, she said, the Consul was not in. No, she was not expecting him. Tomorrow?... Perhaps. She couldn't be sure about that. It hardly seemed to Doctor Plarr the proper way to run a Consulate.

       Doctor Plarr took an hour's siesta after lunch and then he returned to the Consulate on his way to some bedridden patients in the 'barrio popular'—if you could call what they lay on beds. He was agreeably surprised when the door was opened by Charles Fortnum himself. The Consul had spoken at their first meeting of having moments of melancholy. Perhaps he was suffering from such a moment now. He looked at the doctor with a frown which was defensive and puzzled as though an unpleasant memory stirred somewhere in his unconscious. "Yes?"

       "I'm Doctor Plarr."

       "Plarr?"

       "We met one night with Humphries."

       "Oh yes, did we? Of course. Come in." Three doors opened off a dark passage. From behind one of them there seeped the smell of unwashed dishes. Perhaps another indicated a bedroom. The third stood open and Fortnum led him in. A desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet, a safe, a colored reproduction of An-nigoni's portrait of the Queen with a crack in the glass—that was about all. And the desk was quite bare except for a stand-up calender which advertised an Argentinian tea.

       "I'm sorry to disturb you," Doctor Plarr said. "I looked in this morning..."

       "I can't always be here. I have no assistant. There are a lot of official duties. This morning... yes, I was with the Governor. What can I do for you?"

       "I've brought some documents I want witnessed."

       "Show them to me."

       Fortnum sat heavily down and began to open a number of drawers. From one he pulled a blotting pad, from another paper and envelopes, from a third a seal, a ballpoint pen. He began to arrange them on the desk as though they were chessmen. He reversed the position of the seal and the pen—perhaps inadvertently he had put the queen on the wrong side of the king. He read the documents with apparent care, but his eyes betrayed him—the words obviously meant nothing to him—then he waited for Doctor Plarr to sign. Afterward he stamped the papers and added his own signature, Charles Q. Fortnum. "A thousand pesos," he said. "Don't ask about the Q. I keep it dark." He offered no receipt, but Doctor Plarr paid without question.

       The Consul said, "I've got a splitting headache. You know how it is—the heat, the humidity. This is a damnable climate. God knows why my father chose to live in it and die in it. Why didn't he settle in the south? Anywhere but here."

       "If you feel that way, why don't you sell up and go?"

       "Too late," the Consul said, "I'm sixty-one next year. What's the good of doing anything at sixty-one? Have you any aspirin in that case of yours, Plarr? "Yes. Have you some water?"

       "Just give it me as it is. I eat the things. They work quicker that way." He chewed up the aspirin and asked for another.

       "Don't you find the taste disagreeable?"

       "You get accustomed. I don't like the taste of water here either if it comes to that. My God, I do feel like hell today."

       "Perhaps I ought to take your blood pressure."

       "Why? Do you think there's something wrong?"

       "No, but a check is always good at your age."

       "It's not my blood pressure that's wrong. It's life."

       "Overworked?"

       "I wouldn't exactly say that. But there's a new Ambassador—he bothers me."

       "What about?"

       "He wants a report on the maté industry in this province. Why? Nobody drinks maté in the old country. Never heard of it probably, but I'll have to work for a week, driving around on bad roads, and then those fellows at the Embassy wonder why I have to import a new car every two years. It's my right to have one. My diplomatic right. I pay for it myself and if I choose to sell it again it's my concern not the Ambassador's. Fortnum's Pride is more reliable on these roads. I charge nothing for her, and yet I'm wearing her out in their service. What a lot of mean bastards they are, Plarr, at the Embassy. They even question the rent I pay for this office."

       Doctor Plarr unpacked his briefcase.

       "What's all that nonsense?"

       "I thought we agreed to take your blood pressure."

       "Then we'd better go into the bedroom," the Consul said. "It wouldn't look good if my maid came in. The news would be all over the city in no timethat I was a dying man. And then the bills would pour in."

       The bedroom was almost as bare as the bureau. The bed had been disturbed during the siesta hour, and a pillow lay on the floor beside an empty glass. A photograph of a man with a heavy moustache in riding kit hung above the bed like a substitute for the Queen. The Consul sat on the rumpled coverlet and bared his arm. Doctor Plarr began to inflate the rubber band.

       "Do you really think there's something wrong about these headaches?"

       Doctor Plarr watched the dial. He said, "I think there's something wrong in drinking so much at your age." He let the air run out.

       "Headaches run in the family. My father had terrible headaches. He died suddenly. A stroke. That's him up there. He was a great horseman. He tried to make me one too, but I couldn't bear the stupid brutes."

       "I thought you told me you had a horse. Fortnum's Pride, wasn't it?"

       "Oh, that's not a horse, that's my Land Rover. You'll never catch me on a horse's back. Tell me the worst, Plarr."

       "These contraptions never tell the worst—or the best. All the same your pressure's a bit high. I'll give you some tablets, but couldn't you cut down the drink a little?"

       "That's what the doctors were always saying to my father. He told me once he might have been paying a lot of parrots for squawking the same thing. I suppose I must take after the old bastard—except for the horses. They scare me stiff. He used to be angry about that. He said, 'You've got to conquer fear, Charley, or it will conquer you.' What's your other name, Plarr?"

       "Eduardo."

       "I'm Charley to my friends. Mind if I call you Ted?"

       "If you must."

       Charley Fortnum sober had arrived at the same stage of intimacy which he had reached on the last occasion, though by a longer route. Doctor Plarr wondered how often, if their acquaintance continued, they would have to tread the same path before they arrived on the last lap at Charley and Ted.

       "You know there's only one other Englishman in this city. A fellow called Humphries, an English teacher. Met him?"

       "We were all together one night. Don't you remember? I saw you home."

       The Honorary Consul looked at him with an expression of near fear. "No, I don't. Not a thing. Is that a bad sign?"

       "Oh, it happens to all of us sometimes if we are drunk enough."

       "When I saw you outside the door, I did think for a moment I remembered your face. That's why I asked your name. I thought I might have bought something from you and forgotten to pay. I'll have to go a bit steadier, won't I? For a while, I mean."

       "It wouldn't do you any harm."

       "I remember some things very well, but I'm like the old man—he used to forget a lot too. Do you know once—I'd fallen off my horse, it got up suddenly on its hind legs—just to test me, the beast I mean. I was only six, it knew I was only a kid, it was right by the house, and my father was sitting there on the verandah. I was scared in case he might be angry, but what scared me worse was I could see when he looked down at me, where I lay on the ground, that he didn't even remember who I was. He wasn't angry at all, he was puzzled and worried, and he went back to his chair and took up his glass again. So I went round the back to the kitchen (the cook was always a good friend of mine), and I left the bloody horse. Of course I understand now. We had that much in common. He forgot things when he was drunk. Are you married, Ted?"