The Three Sentinels (10 page)

‘Nothing, man! Lorenzo must attach himself, and I have told you that Mr. Birenfield was very polite. An order, and Lorenzo was happy!’

‘And Mrs. Birenfield?’

‘Like him. And since she could find little to do in Cabo Desierto she would spend half the day in bed talking to Amelia or Mrs. Gateson.’

Not much alternative perhaps. At least Birenfield had something to come home to. Wonder if he talked over the problems of the Three Sentinels or gave them up and joined her in bed! At any rate
he wasn’t limited to the brilliant emptiness of the night.

When the Thorpes arrived, they seemed unsure that they were justified in inviting themselves. Mat made them very welcome, envying their partnership. Part of Thorpe’s reputation for knowing
names and faces was undoubtedly due to his wife.

‘It was Jane who wanted to see you,’ he explained. ‘But I thought Fd walk over with her.’

She would have been well liked in the Cabo Desierto of thirty years earlier, Mat thought—a fair, motherly woman, squarish rather than full, who could have run the canteens for them and had
every American pulling out family snaps from his wallet within five minutes.

‘I’ve got a message for you,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want you to think I’m on the wrong side.’

‘I don’t know which is the wrong one, Mrs. Thorpe. There ain’t no Salvation Army to tell us.’

She smiled and thanked heaven she had not got to deal with London and the Government, but just Cabo Desierto.

‘I got on so well with poor Catalina. And I was in at the end, you see. So whenever I meet Rafael Garay he goes out of his way to talk to me. He wants a private interview with you, but he
won’t come to your house or office.’

‘I’ve told her I don’t like it,’ Thorpe interrupted. ‘It’s all over the town that Garay and Delgado paid you a drink, so if they want to talk they can do it
again.’

‘No, not of their own accord. I took them by surprise. Where does he suggest we meet, Mrs. Thorpe?’

‘He said he was working on the communal pig pens every evening if you happened to be passing.’

‘Our pigs or theirs?’

‘Theirs. They bought them from the Company long before the boycott.’

He got her talking about Garay. She wondered whether Catalina had grabbed him as just right for her taste or whether she had formed his character. He was too honest, she thought, to be an
agitator; the job had been forced on him by general acclaim. Ray Thorpe added that Garay would make a first-class soldier—a formidable guerrilla leader if it ever came to street fighting
again—but he wasn’t any sort of politician.

‘No. Too much human affection,’ Mat said. ‘That’s why he daren’t give an inch.’

‘Affection! Affection for what?’

‘I only heard it in his voice. For his fellows, I suppose, and of course his son.’

‘Now, how on earth do you know about Chepe?’ Jane asked.

‘I’ve run across him.’

‘That child needs a firm hand. He’s a law to himself.’

‘Better than other people’s.’

‘Not at seven years old,’ she protested.

‘Do you see him? Often?’

‘You sound jealous, Mr. Darlow. No, he just turns up sometimes and looks at me with big eyes and goes away.’

‘Poor little blighter!’

‘Rafael gives him all the love that Catalina did. Chepe is his treasure. But he hasn’t enough time now.’

‘Does he feel his life is in any danger?’

‘He hasn’t mentioned it. From whom?’

‘Well, me—for one of several.’

‘Of course not! I don’t see how you have worked it, but he trusts you.’

‘It’s mutual. I shall have the police guards removed altogether from headquarters and my house.’

‘You mustn’t do that!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ll just create resentment.’

‘Why? It’s a gesture I can afford to make. The police are no earthly use.’

‘But the mothers like to see them. And if you take the guards off your house, Bill Gateson and the others will have to.’

‘They can do as they wish.’

‘No, they can’t, Mr. Darlow. They’ll look such cowards if they don’t do the same as you.’

She might be right, but reducing the temperature was what mattered, not popularity at the Country Club.

‘Blind ahead with whatever you decide, but keep your eyes open!’ Thorpe said. ‘You and Garay are beginning to remind me of a couple of snipers I once saw—so bloody
fascinated by each other that neither looked to his flank.’

Mat let that go. Ray Thorpe saw everything in terms of attack, but there was truth in what he said. At present it was only possible to blind ahead, probing as he went. As for his flanks, they
were all uncovered.

However, the invitation to the pig pens could not be refused. Dignity was nonsense, and the Superintendent’s suspicion of a trap did not fit his wife’s reading of Garay. So the
following evening he drove out along the lush communal lands smelling as if they received the rainfall of green jungle. Damn it, this was a high pressure oil field, not a millionaire’s
estancia! There was one sure way to smash the boycott: by emptying the Charca. He wondered if the men in the distance, sweating with pick and shovel and bags of cement to extend the channels
realised it as clearly as he.

He left his car and walked over to the communal pigs. It was on the sun shelters that Rafael Garay was working. The model pens and styes did not look as if repairs would be needed for years. In
the darkness under the leaf thatch the face and arms of the carpenter were invisible. A white cotton shirt was knocking in staples without any occupant.

Mat leaned on a rail until the white eyes rolled in his direction.

‘What’s new?’ he asked.

Rafael came over to him. Under the dark face the stocky, powerful figure was that of a Spanish peasant.

‘Nothing to please you, Mr. Manager. I only wished to thank you with all my heart.’

‘But that does please me. What for?’

‘My son has told me all the truth of what happened on the night of your arrival. There is no one in the world who would have done what you did.’

‘Nothing special, man! It’s just that I have no children of my own. Don’t punish him! What courage!’

‘I want you to know that he did not get his dynamite from me.’

‘Then I hope you know where he did get it.’

Rafael hesitated.

‘You need not have a care,’ he said. ‘I give you a whole sea of gratitude, and go with God!’

‘When may I meet your committee?’

‘Whenever you wish. You have only to let me know.’

‘Meanwhile, consider this with your mates! The boycott does not hurt us as much as you believe. The value of the oil we are losing is nothing compared to the value of the field.’

‘It has no value. You cannot sell a Company which will never have oil.’

‘Never is a big word, friend. If you won’t work, the Government may send a cruiser—and a shipload of men who will.’

‘Then they will have to deport the lot of us by force.’

A blank wall. There was no longer any government this side of the Iron Curtain which would dare to mow down its workers—let alone a bunch of so-called liberals hanging on to power and
continually threatened by an explosion from the left. A bloody wonder the politicians didn’t order prayers in the churches for Cabo Desierto’s General Manager!

And here was another decision to be taken which could irrevocably alter the future. Ray Thorpe’s remark, lumping himself and Garay together, had some bearing on it. If there were a sniper
out to the flank, this black spellbinder had much the better chance of spotting him.

‘By the way, Don Rafael,’ he said, using the prefix of courteous equality, ‘it was not dynamite; it was gelignite.’

‘What is that?’

‘Much the same, but for cutting steel.’

‘From the company store?’

‘No. We haven’t any.’

The last red segment of the sun vanished into the Pacific as Mat Darlow started down to the Sports Pavilion for a first meeting with the boycott committee; yet lights behind
east-facing windows were already on by the time his car reached the sea front. It was no wonder, he thought, that so harsh and exact a world, where the only twilight was the mountain shadow which
delayed dawn, forced upon those who lived in it a violent simplicity.

For the last forty-eight hours he had been mulling over Henry’s reply to his private letter. Silky as always. But at least the Managing Director was backing him—with presumably the
approval of some nebula of money evolving through the telephones of the City until ready to condense into golden reality.

A cautious letter like the label on a box of pills. May be prescribed with confidence but watch out for contra-indications! Still, there was warmth and support. It occurred to
Mat—not for the first time in his life—that he met with approval at the top and the bottom and mistrust in the middle.

Lorenzo stopped the car at the gate to the sports ground and impassively opened the door for the General Manager. Though there was nothing obsequious about his bearing or legs, from the waist up
he always seemed to be waiting for orders. The loose gathering of oil workers returned Mat’s greetings as he walked through them, showing neither enmity nor encouragement; he might have been
a groundsman come to mark out the football field. That was more or less what he wanted. He had announced his intention as merely asking and answering questions on such minor points as canteens,
imports, use of launches and the school, and had firmly turned down a suggestion that the Mayor should ceremoniously take the chair. The meeting would then have developed into a competition of
eloquence, hardening attitudes and settling nothing.

Fourteen of the leaders were there to receive him. The table round which they sat was intelligently arranged with Rafael Garay at one end and himself, flanked by Gil Delgado, at the other.
Though some members of the committee were cold and smug and some inclined to be over-hearty from embarrassment he was surprised at the deference shown to him.

For an hour relations were easy enough. With pad and pencil in front of him, he might have been, say, a Borough Engineer at a meeting of tenants, ready to agree to some of their requirements and
to explain why others could not be met. Garay was his natural self. He gave the impression of a man so sure of his policy that he could afford to be reasonable, even grateful. Delgado, on the other
hand, several times struck a note of hostility. Why? A possible reading was that he had to pretend more solidarity than he really felt.

‘Wine is agreed then,’ Delgado said, ‘on condition that you do not expect us to hold out our mugs outside the church door. But what about water? Will you sign a contract for
our supply?’

Nobody else spoke. For a moment Mat could hear the monotony of the surf. Evidently this was unexpected.

‘A lot of good that would be to you! If you put an end to the Company, what value has the Company’s signature?’

That rammed home one of the illogicalities of their stubbornness. If there was to be no more oil, who or what would own Cabo Desierto? Delgado left it at that, his only comment being a half
smile of contempt directed down the table. It looked as if he accepted the answer and was ready to let it stay in the minds of the committee. The contempt could be for them.

‘Listen, Mr. Manager!’ Garay exclaimed. ‘No one will ever drive us from our homes.’

‘No need to repeat it. I agree. No one will. But you must excuse me, Don Rafael. I did not mean to break our understanding that the boycott would not be discussed. Now, before I leave, may
I ask one question? Tell me to go to the devil if you like! What exactly are your present relations with your Union?’

The committee erupted. At least six indignant voices bellowed simultaneously, with the howl of a passing jet from high note to low, that they had no relations with the dirty sons of whores.

‘You pay your dues?’

‘Never again!’ Garay answered.

‘And if a senior delegate were to come and help us with negotiations ?’

‘Into the harbour! And this time no launch to fish him out!’

‘That’s hard on me. I am forced to be the Company, your Union, the State and myself all at the same time.’

‘Then you won’t need any stamps on the letters, Mr. Manager,’ Delgado said and raised a general laugh.

‘Very true. But mine are delivered and yours are not.’

The retort went home with no reply but muttering. It was time to remind them that he had power as well as good will. He thanked the committee and got up. Except for his calculated slip, terms of
peace had never been mentioned at all. He wondered how many of them were secretly disappointed.