Days of Your Fathers (18 page)

‘That's what I was thinking as we joggled along the Altiplano from Quito to Riobamba. It was a bad five hours – I expect you've had 'em too – but something came out of it.
I discovered that all the time I had been wanting a farm without my father.

‘Of course I could have had a farm without my father any year in the last twenty when I was flush. But it hadn't occurred to me. Farms and fathers – they went together in my mind. I saw they needn't necessarily go together. And I knew where I wanted my farm, too. Up here. None of your tropics and deserts for me. I like grass.

‘I didn't give my fellow-passengers another thought. I didn't want to talk, nor did they. When we got to Riobamba I gave them a nod and strolled over to the hotel carrying my own bag. That seems unlikely, I know, considering all the boys in town earn their pocket-money at the station. But they were busy struggling for Doña Clara's baggage and, when they got it, arguing about who should carry what. She disorganised that station good and proper, and then put the hotel out of action by having everything she possessed taken up to her room. After that she abode by her stuff, like the chap in the Bible.

‘As soon as the hall was clear I made tracks for the bar to see if I couldn't shake that depression. I had perched myself on a high stool before I saw Don Anastasio. He was hiding behind a palm-tree at the side of the door into the hall, so that anyone looking through could honestly say they hadn't seen him. He had a whisky and soda in a pint glass on the table at his side. A good rich yellow it was, too. It was mixed about half and half – as I found out when I tasted the one he ordered for me.

‘Yes, he waved me into the next chair as soon as our eyes met. That's why I bless that hotel. If I hadn't come down to the bar just then, I might be – well, anywhere to-day. Clerking it in Costa Rica, for example, and stealing enough from my boss to get tight every night.

‘We had a couple of drinks together, and he asked me what I was doing in Ecuador and how I liked it. I couldn't tell him the truth. He'd have laughed probably, but I was too ashamed of it myself. I'd never been ordered out of a country before, you see. I'd deserved it several times – plenty of times! But it hadn't actually happened. It takes a
fact to make my conscience work. I suppose that's so for most people. We think ourselves bloody angels until the judge hands out a sentence of five years' hard, and then we see what we really are.

‘I told Don Anastasio that I'd been up and down the coast for years without ever visiting Quito, and that I'd come up to have a look at it – which was true so far as it went. I said I liked it best of all the republics. That pleased him. And what pleased him still more was that I treated him with proper respect. He was a jolly fellow of about my own age, but that was no reason for forgetting he was a vice-president. Don't think I'm a snob, but I've been knocking around South America long enough to enjoy calling a man Excellency if he's entitled to it. And Don Anastasio was. He was one of the old sort, rich as they make 'em, and free and easy in his ways. He looked taller than his height, for he had a fine head on him with a wavy, pointed brown beard and a moustache that didn't go up nor down, but straight out to the sides in two soft even waves. Gallant – that's the word for his face. A man you liked at first sight, with a twinkle in his eyes when he wasn't looking at Doña Clara.'

‘Where is he now?' I asked.

‘Gone off as a diplomat. His party was thrown out in the last revolution, but he always gets a job. Everyone likes him, so they see that his missus has something to keep her quiet.

‘Well, after a bit he asked me if I'd care to join them at dinner. I said I feared the
señora
would be too tired for a guest. I thought, you see, that she'd probably object. I'd misjudged Don Anastasio there. He was much too polite to ask a chap to sit down with his wife unless he knew she would approve. He wasn't afraid of her; he was just too damned courteous. It came to the same in the end.

‘Don Anastasio insisted. She had said, it seemed, that I looked very distinguished and that she was glad Pennyfather had introduced me. I expect that, like most women, she'd been piqued at my making no advances though she was ready enough to snub me if I did.

‘She was very cordial at dinner. She let me know that she didn't usually entertain people she met on trains, but was graciously pleased to make an exception. Doña Clara wasn't inhospitable – so long as you showed you were impressed by her as a hostess. And that was easy. She was a beauty. The more exasperated with her you were, the more you wanted to wake her up. She made you understand how it is men can beat their wives when they wouldn't beat a dog.

Don Anastasio got us talking about antiquities. I'm as interested in them in a casual way as you are, and when he said there were the foundations of a Quito temple in Riobamba I replied exactly what he wanted to hear – that I'd have liked to see them if only it had been daylight.

‘He was all set on showing me the temple anyway, and we marched off sedately after dinner with Doña Clara's blessing and a couple of cigars. I don't think she would have let him go so easily, but her woman's instinct – you know, the one they pride themselves is never wrong – told her that I didn't much want to go and that I'd soon lead the expedition back to the hotel and her. As a matter of fact I was thinking the same as her husband – that the night was young and that if there was anything to do in Riobamba we might as well do it.'

‘But is there a temple?' I asked.

‘I don't know. Things began to move too fast. I've thought about it once or twice since, but whenever I ride into Riobamba I'm marketing or seeing friends, and damned if I ever remember to find out.

‘Don Anastasio had never been on the loose in Riobamba and didn't know the town. Well, you or I would have asked at the hotel desk, but the vice-president went straight to the best authority – and that was the mayor. We hired a car and drove to his home and were told that he'd gone to the movies with his wife. So off we drove to the slush palace, and Don Anastasio hauls out the manager.

‘“Flash a notice on the screen,” he says, “to inform the
alcalde
that the vice-president is outside and wishes to speak to him.”

‘The manager recognised Don Anastasio and didn't hesitate.
We waited in the car for three minutes or so, and out jumped the mayor like a bull into the ring – wild-eyed and blinking and so fast you'd have thought the doorman had stuck a dart into his bottom. He believed there was a revolution on.

‘Don Anastasio calmed the alcalde down, and let him have a full string of compliments. Then he said he wanted him for an hour on urgent business and that he'd better go in again and tell his wife not to wait.

‘But the alcalde wasn't doing anything so easy. Not on your life! He was swelling with importance. He wrote a note to his wife, and told the manager to flash
that
on the screen. His stock was up. He'd have something to talk about for the rest of his life.

‘We put him in the car and the vice-president explained that I was a distinguished Englishman just passing through the country, and that I'd said I hadn't seen any pretty women in Ecuador. He was sorry he hadn't met me in time to show me Quito, but here we were, still on the Altiplano, and what about it? Of course I protested politely, but the alcalde was hurt. I gathered he was quite prepared to ring the church bells, declare a fiesta and have a parade of beauty up and down the main street.

‘Don Anastasio put it to him what we wanted was more discreet amusement than that. The alcalde thought for a bit, and then gave the chauffeur an address. It was his girl's. He didn't produce her and he didn't invite us in; he just sent her off in another car to visit some of her pals. Then he helped us buy a case of champagne, gave us the keys of his country cottage and said good-night. He could keep his mouth shut, that alcalde. He's a senator now. Don Anastasio saw to that.

‘It was a pretty little house about half an hour out of town with a patio full of flowers and a big fireplace and everything we could want. We hadn't had time for more than a bottle before the alcalde's young woman drove up, dropped three of her girlfriends at the front door and ran away laughing to the car before we could get a glimpse of her.

‘You can imagine the rest for yourself. We woke up …'

‘I can't imagine it,' I said.

‘Well, that's right. Perhaps you can't. Or rather you'd imagine something much better than they really were. For the fact is they were more Indian than white and very solid.

‘You know how it is. These Spanish-Americans need women about before they'll really let themselves go. And Anastasio let himself go as if he hadn't seen a woman or a guitar or a glass of wine in the last ten years. Lord, what a show! And every time he did anything particularly outrageous he'd clap me on the back and wish to God there were more Englishmen like me. He said they ought to appoint me British Minister to Ecuador. That was when I was showing the girls a dance I learned in Swaziland.

‘Well, when the case was nearly empty, I thought I'd lie down and have a sleep. The room was pretty hot. I remember dreaming I was an orchid on the coast of Esmeralda, and the rain was making me grow into a fine, feeling, embracing sort of vegetable. I lay awake for a second or two, and, damn it, it
was
raining – at least I thought it was. What was really happening was that one of the girls was watering me with a watering-can. She was a gentle little creature. She couldn't bring herself to chuck the lot over my head.

‘I squirted the last bottle of champagne at her, for I was feeling fine and thought she'd woken me up for purposes of her own. But then I saw that the chinks in the shutters weren't as black as they should have been. It was dawn and we hadn't more than half an hour to catch our train, if we had that. I made a dive for my watch, and saw we had thirty-five minutes.

‘Anastasio was fast asleep on the floor with one girl's head on his knees and the other's on his chest. It was a pretty sight. I mean, a really pretty sight. There he lay with their black hair squandered all over his body, and looking like Jupiter asleep with his cupbearers. However, I hadn't time to go into that.

‘I watered him a bit with the watering-can, and he sat up and laughed like hell.

‘
“Jorge de mi alma!”
he shouts.
“El Ministro de la Gran
Bretagna
!” remembering his last joke as a man will when he wakes up with his liquor still on him, and the headache still an hour or two away.

‘I pointed out that we had just thirty-two minutes to get to Riobamba station. I didn't mention Doña Clara. One shock was enough at a time.

‘“Look for my clothes, Jorge,” he said, “while I write a note to the alcalde.”

‘That was like him. He didn't know whether he'd see the man again, and he wasn't going without a word of thanks.

‘I retrieved our clothes from the damned odd places they'd got to, and we put on whatever came to hand. Anastasio gave the girls a great wad of sucres, and we tumbled into the car. We did that run back to Riobamba in twenty minutes with no time to think of anything except sorting ourselves out. By the time we'd each got dressed in our own clothes we found we were only short one tie and one pair of socks. We tossed for them. He won the tie and I won the socks.

‘There was Doña Clara in the hall of the hotel with all the baggage round her, and all the hotel staff and her team of porters trying not to laugh. You can imagine what we looked like. I can't answer for myself, but Anastasio had one of his moustaches up in the air and the other spread out flat like a wing. And his coat was all white with plaster where a bit of the ceiling had fallen on it.

‘
“Queridita
,” says Anastasio, “
queridita Clarita
, you will not believe me, but …”

‘I tell you, I felt sorry. I've never seen such an angry woman. She'd been hurt, you see, right where it hurt most – in her pride. She might have forgiven him if nobody else had known that he'd stayed out all night. But here he was in front of all the people she'd been impressing for the last twelve hours.

‘
“Se ha pasado algo muy raro,”
Anastasio said.

‘If you'd listened to the grave voice he put on you'd have believed what he said: that something very rare had come to pass. I knew he hadn't thought of what it was yet. But I
could have sworn he was a just man to whom something outrageous had happened. Kidnapping or mistaken arrest.

‘
“Muy raro,”
he repeated, shaking his head.
“Muy raro.”

‘Then he pretended to notice the time. He sent all those fellows running to the station, paid his bill, shot a man upstairs for my bag, and put on a tremendous show of activity which would keep him away from his wife until he could think of a story.

‘“Jorge,” he said to me, “for the love of God, what will I tell her?” and he giggled, for he was still in no state to see the awfulness of what had happened. ‘You're the British Minister, Jorge,' he said to me. ‘Think,
hijo mio
! Think of something!'

‘Well, I was tight as a tick myself, and all I could think of was how damn funny he looked without any socks. And at that we went off into yells of laughter and staggered over to the station on the heels of Doña Clara.

The alcalde was there to see us off with some of the local worthies. Anastasio fell into his arms and began to thank him for the hospitality of Riobamba – but in such well-chosen words that nobody could tell exactly how much hospitality we had enjoyed. Then he introduced me all over again.

‘“And let me tell you,
amigo,”
he says to the alcalde, “that you have the honour of speaking to the new British Minister.”

‘The alcalde took him quite seriously, shook my hand and apologised for not having treated me with profounder respect the night before. The vice-president stared at him. Then he let out a whoop, linked his arms in the alcalde's and mine and led us at a run to the train. Thanks to the alcalde we got up the steps of the coach in good order and halted in front of Doña Clara. She looked clean through us, but that didn't stop Anastasio.