The Three Sentinels (12 page)

How then could Lorenzo have missed it? Rafael was sure from his behaviour that he had been instructed where to find the cache, and with so simple a description he could not go wrong.

‘But if Lorenzo was told it was at 32, son! He can read.’

‘He can’t read what isn’t there, Rafael. The number board has blown down. That was why Chepe didn’t notice it.’

It made sense. The numbering of the wells depended on when they were drilled. 32 had been an unprofitable wild-cat. It stood among the fifties which had been drilled later and deeper. 32A,
however, was where it ought to be, among the other thirties. Rafael could imagine how Lorenzo had started off in the right direction and then found only wells numbered in the fifties and no 32 at
all. He naturally assumed that he had got lost in the dark maze of derricks and turned back to the more or less regular ranks of the thirties. There he found 32A all right, but no hole. So he was
more lost than ever.

However, it was hard to see how the man from the fishing boat
Rosita
, a stranger whose face Chepe did not know, could be so familiar with the abandoned wells of the old field. A
possible answer was that he had been given an accurate map of the route from 58, where his truck stopped, to 32 and so had found the boarded hole without any trouble.

Rafael woke the boy up and asked if he had seen the stranger looking at a map. Chepe, always eager for conversation as soon as he opened his eyes, demanded to know what a map was. Rafael
explained that it was like a scale drawing in the carpenter’s shop, but of places not things. Chepe thought very solemnly, put his forefinger to his nose, hastily withdrew it and came out
with the information that the stranger had sometimes looked at a piece of paper.

The worrying question was who had drawn the map. Antón’s answer to that was the hated Company, the assassins capable of any iniquity. A month earlier Rafael’s answer would
have been the same; but now at least he could rule out the present boss who had warned him that Chepe’s toffee, as he called it, could be meant for the water. And if Don Mateo had any reason
to suspect where it was he would never have employed his zombie of a chauffeur in the dark but sent out a bold, no-nonsense search party.

‘Leave it where it is until we have need of it!’ he said. ‘And not a word to anyone. There is a lot I do not understand.’

‘But we must have weapons, Chief!’ Antón protested. ‘Every man should have some of this stuff in his house. We must have weapons. I tell you that even the Mayor’s
revolver—the firing pin does not reach the cartridge.’

‘To hell with the Mayor’s revolver!’

But Rafael’s gloom faded away as he remembered the incident. Antón had extracted the revolver from the municipal holster in full view of a delighted crowd while the Mayor was waving
his arms and trying to be heard.

‘Not yet, friend,’ he said more gently. ‘This explosive may not be so easy to use as you think. Perhaps Lorenzo will show us when we are ready to make him talk.’

There was no denying that the comfort of the Club’s shaded terrace was extraordinarily pleasant. A month earlier it would have been beyond any possible day-dream that Mat
should find himself, well-paid, back in all the sensuous satisfactions of the tropics. Under his eyes in the comparative cool of the evening the tennis players twanged their little balls back and
forth. Further away there were half a dozen couples on the nine-hole golf course. Eighteen had been planned with three long holes on top of the ridge, two devilish short ones and a long, downhill
drive back to the valley. Every day at the bar someone would regret that Cabo Desierto had got the Sentinels on the ridge instead.

He had moved too far away from his compatriots. In war that had been unnoticeable. Even in a government office it had been disguised by the smoothness of routine for seven hours and thereafter
the dispersal of colleagues into their private lives. But here—here the Company had made a home from home for its executives as well as its workers and, by God, he preferred the latter! He
would rather have been sitting in the town café and knew it and hoped it didn’t show. Probably not. His surface was as genial as anyone could wish. But even these expatriate
suburbanites did in the end judge a man by his actions and not by his image. He knew they could not quite make him out. He appeared to be doing nothing too contentedly, and the nothing was not
being done in the right places. As González had pointed out, it was hard to tell where he would be and why he was there. The proper places in which to do nothing were the offices or the
Club. Or at home with a whisky bottle. They’d have forgiven that.

He never felt his isolation when reality intervened. And what the hell did he mean by reality, Mat asked himself? Well, it included the men and the town and Garay and his son and even Captain
González; it did not quite include the games-players and their wives, though he admitted it would if the field were working flat out and at peace. Meanwhile their morale could safely be left
to Bill Gateson who was now strolling rather smugly across the lawn to the Club House after a masterly bit of umpiring. Gateson identified himself absolutely with the Company. He couldn’t see
that it had done anything wrong in detaining those husbands in the Capital; it had been just a tactful delay, not a grossly broken promise. His job and this green playground were reality for him.
God Almighty! Reality was the bodies of seventeen women and five children painstakingly collected from their route and now buried in the new cemetery between high tidemark and the refuse of the
shacks where they had lived.

He waved to Gateson to join him. As soon as he had made his cheerful gesture, one of the club waiters hurried over to his table and put in front of him a paper on a saucer as if it were a bill
to sign.
Sr. Delgado wants to know where he may see you.
Mat pretended to sign it, writing:
Tonight, 11 p.m. Garden of my house.
Reality had intruded upon Decorum. A very proper
marble relief for the Albert Hall, Mat thought—with fig-leafed waiter in the background who probably understood enough English to be able to pass on unguarded conversation to Delgado.

‘Didn’t see you this morning,’ Gateson said.

‘No. I was at the school, Bill.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing more than any other bloody school. I was arranging for school lunches. They have ’em in England. Why not here?’

‘Who’s going to pay for them?’

‘The Three Sentinels. Meanwhile, a loan to the Mayor.’

‘You’re getting no response, Mat.’

‘On the edge of it, I think. If I’m wrong I’ll have to take up golf again.’

‘I didn’t know you played.’

‘As a boy. It was a game then.’

‘What was your handicap?’

‘I always remember that. At fifteen it was fifteen.’

‘Pretty good. What made you give it up?’

‘Watching monkeys. Objectless activity.’

‘I say, that’s a bit strong, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Ever watched monkeys?’

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘They give you the woollies after a time.’

The temptation to shake up Gateson was irresistible, but Mat knew he shouldn’t do it. He turned on the charm, made room for the Chief Accountant and the Chemist, ordered more drinks and
produced a couple of good stories which Cabo Desierto could not possibly have heard before since they happened to be true. He was in top gear again, extending his momentary exhilaration to the lot
of them.

A secret visit from Gil Delgado could be the beginning of the end—and then, with luck, a return to the golden days of Cabo Desierto when there was no need for any of these subtleties. If
you wanted to talk to the General Manager you bust into his offices with the drilling mud on your boots and got on with the business; or if you were a workers’ delegate with a grievance you
could go and raise hell with young Mat Darlow who would shout you down and fix it.

He walked home—another eccentricity which his subordinates hoped they were not expected to copy—and in by the gate of his house which now belonged to him alone. He had made
González remove that futile police guard altogether. Nothing could be said for it except the fish stew. Attracted by the nightly scent he had gone out for a plate, bringing a bottle with
him. A very profitable hour had convinced him that all the police had ever planned was a safe line of retreat.

He warned Pepe that he would be sitting by the pool after dinner and officially not at home.

‘You needn’t come out to see if I want anything.’

‘I understand, Don Mateo. I will tell Amelia to see that your room has fresh flowers—and some champagne perhaps?’

‘Business, friend, not fun! Two chairs and brandy and cigars on the pedestal of the boy.’

‘What boy?’

‘The rim of the pool, I meant.’

‘You are too much alone, Don Mateo. Yet there are so many who are fond of you.’

‘It’s a pity that my three ladies are so jealous.’

‘In England?’

‘Up there on the ridge, Pepe.’

At half past ten he sat back in his chair and waited. Funny mistake, that! He must have been imagining a place for the bronze boy so often that the statuette had become real. He wasn’t
looking forward to this interview with Delgado as much as he had. There was a smell of treachery. What an extraordinary word to think! Growing respect for that mad priest, Garay, evidently had
something to do with it. Prejudice against Delgado was illogical and unjust—exactly the same feeling that made one despise the fellow who came over from the enemy in war, though his
information might be beyond value and his motives impeccable.

Delgado came pacing round the house looking right and left into the darkness like a lion distrustful of some scent on the wind. There was indeed a leonine touch about him, for he was a big,
loose man with a brown mane—possibly the lightest hair among the workers of Cabo Desierto—and a sandy skin much the colour of Mat’s own. He sat down with a nod and without shaking
hands.

‘I give you my word that we are alone,’ Mat said.

‘Don Mateo, I believe you are not a man to say something without a purpose.’

‘Brandy?’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘Then I am compelled to drink alone, if you will excuse me. How is Don Rafael?’

‘As always.’

‘That is why you have come by yourself?’

‘He has a lot to do.’

‘More than ever now. What made him put a guard on the Charca?’

‘Don’t play with me! Because you advised it.’

‘I was not sure whether he had told you.’

‘We have no secrets from each other.’

‘But, all the same, you are here alone.’

‘And you, too! And do not forget it!’

‘Don Gil, I am tired of telling people that one cannot negotiate with a dead man.’

‘Enough conversation! You said at the committee that no one would ever drive us from our homes. Were you speaking for the Company?’

‘No.’

‘Then what am I doing here?’

‘Sit down, man! I was speaking for myself.’

‘If you mean it, that’s good enough for some of us.’

‘Don Gil, after a compliment like that I must insist that you take a brandy.’

Delgado this time could not refuse. Mat observed that the slack, elastic line of his orator’s mouth was equally well designed for wrapping round a fat cigar.

‘I intend that any of you shall be able to rent his house whether he works for the Company or not. But you cannot call off the boycott on my word alone. The Company must formally
agree.’

‘Who says we will call it off?’

‘Nobody yet. There have to be votes in your committee and in London as well. I shall carry the day. Can you?’

Delgado sipped his brandy in silence and at last remarked that half the field would do whatever Rafael Garay said.

‘What happens then?’

‘Rafael is a man of peace, Don Mateo. He shows no mercy.’

A paradox on the face of it! One never knew what would come out of these intelligent fellows whose only education was raw life. Mat saw what he meant. Britain and Hitler, for example. There was
a limit to tolerance. Peace and mercy were two entirely different things. The more you believed in one, the less you could afford of the other.

‘Then we shall be back at the beginning.’

‘That will depend on you and him. He believes what you tell him.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘That’s as may be. Now that we know each other, what was your game with the Charca? It’s in your interest that there should be no water for the land.

‘They say that milk only flows from a contented cow.’

‘You’ve got one hell of a farmyard against you. Up here between the ridges they do not trust you, Don Mateo. They say you are paid to keep the boycott going. They say they had to
give up their policemen, and that women and children dare not go out at night.’

Annoying nonsense, but to be expected. It was difficult for them to see sense in all his quiet building of bridges. Yet libels and gossip were only flies to be brushed away. They had no
solidarity like the knock-out punch which was being prepared for Garay behind his back.

‘And what does your waiter friend tell you that they say about me in London?’

That at last got him a laugh. Delgado appreciated a good thrust in his own style.

He saw him to the gate and went to bed contented. Results were good for a first interview. It had not been very cordial or conclusive but Delgado himself had asked for it and his intention of
proposing a return to work was clear. The collapse of the boycott might even be without violence if provocation were avoided. That, as Delgado had said, could well depend on the friendship between
Garay and himself. A strong word, friendship. Better call it a lack of bitterness.

After breakfast the managerial car was waiting for him without the dutiful Lorenzo. He asked if he were ill. The substitute driver supposed he was; at any rate Lorenzo had not turned up for
work. Mat thought no more of it and gave orders that someone should go to his room and see if he wanted anything. Lorenzo was probably suffering from a hang-over—Cabo Desierto’s
occupational disease—being among the few workers with enough money to buy one. It was hard to imagine him ill; he had the sort of inhospitable body which germs bounced off.