Mask of the Andes. Jon Cleary
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He felt a slight twinge of regret. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you go’
She leant forward. ‘I haven’t thanked you.’
‘What for?’
‘For looking after me the way you did. You’re not bad, Mr Taber.’ She looked at him and nodded approvingly, looking through the exterior of him as an intelligent woman would. ‘I’ve met much worse.’
‘That’s the story of my life. Negative compliments.’ But he grinned, pleased by what she had said. In his turn he had met much worse than her, but he didn’t tell her that. ‘I’ll see you tonight. Ruiz has invited me to the welcome home reception for his son.’
The taxi, an old fin-tailed Plymouth, drove off, its transmission grinding alarmingly. I hope she makes it, Taber thought; and chided himself for not thinking to call Pereira for the Land-Rover. He found himself wishing that no harm should come to Carmel McKenna.
As he turned to go back up into the hotel he saw the policeman, a young stupid-looking Indian, already taking up his watching post on the other side of the street. Christ Almighty, Taber thought, they’re so afraid they have to suspect everyone.
2
Alejandro Ruiz moved through the slow surf of his guests like a dreadnought looking for a place to beach itself. He was accustomed to people coming to him, but this evening his wife had insisted that he must circulate.
‘You make me sound like a red corpuscle,’ he had protested.
‘Not red, my dear. You would have to be blue.’
Their exchange of humour had the usual heaviness of domestic sarcasm, but this evening there had been no real sourness between them. Both of them were so pleased to have Francisco home again with them that their lack of patience with each other, and their occasional deep bitterness, had been put aside. Alejandro was happy to play host to his friends at this party in honour of Francisco, but he was not happy to be told to remain on his feet all evening like his own butler. Especially since there were some guests, not friends, for whom, in normal circumstances, he would never rise to his feet.
Carmel, looking about her as she stood in the big living-room, felt she could have been in Seville. She had spent a month there two years ago when she had thought she was falling in love with a film director who had proved to be in love with bull-fighters. It had been an unsatisfactory month and a further part of her education in men, but she had enjoyed the Seville social scene, though she would not have wanted to belong to it permanently. This was a smaller Seville and suggested a much older one. But that impression came only from the men; the women, rebelling in their own way, in fashion, looked as smart and modern as any she had seen in Europe. No see-through dresses or precipitously plunging necklines, but then aristocrats never went in for those attention-getters anyway. And these people, though they held no titles, looked upon themselves as aristocrats.
She had left off her own see-through blouses in favour of the only modest dress she owned, a black Givenchy that was her all-purpose model. She saw her brother looking approvingly at her and she moved to join him. ‘It’s my papal audience dress.’
‘Did you get to see him?’
‘No. Mother wanted me to go with her last year, but it seemed too hypocritical. I haven’t been to Mass in, oh, I don’t know how long.’
‘How about coming tomorrow morning? I’m saying early Mass at the cathedral.’
‘I’ll see. What time?’
‘Six o’clock.’
‘Oh my God, you’re joking! If I’m ever up at six, it’s only because I haven’t been to bed the night before.’ Then she saw the disappointment, which he had tried to hide, in his face. She pressed his arm. ‘All right, darling. I’ll try to be there. I’ve never heard you say Mass. I don’t think Mother has forgiven me for that.’
‘I’m not the best of performers,’ he said, trying to get rid of the shadow of their mother. ‘Some fellers are real showmen. Don’t expect a spectacular.’
Then a woman, a year or two older than Carmel, came through the swirl of guests towards them. She was not strictly beautiful, except for her eyes which were dark and had extraordinarily long lashes, but there was something about her that held one’s attention while more beautiful women in the room passed by. This one would never need a see-through blouse, thought Carmel. She was not sure what the other woman had: perhaps it was her air of serenity, but it was a serenity that suggested control rather than the passivity that some of the older women in the room had. Hidden in the woman was some passion, for love or truth or justice, for something. She would not take life for granted and that, too, set her apart from so many of the other women at the reception.
‘Carmel, this is Dolores Schiller.’ McKenna’s face had lit up as the woman had approached them. Carmel noticed it, but put it down to her brother’s relief at being interrupted; she knew now that their mother was always going to be a difficult subject between them. ‘She is the mission’s biggest supporter.’
‘What I give the mission is a pittance.’ Her voice was so soft that Carmel, in the hubbub of other voices, had to lean forward to hear her.
‘I meant your moral support,’ said McKenna. ‘Everyone else here thinks I’m wasting my time or I’m just a nuisance.’
‘Are you a newcomer like me?’ Carmel asked.
Dolores Schiller smiled. ‘One side of the family has been here as long as the Ruiz. But my grandfather interrupted the sequence – he was a German and a rather lowly one, I’m afraid. He was a socialist journalist, something the family did not discover till after he and my grandmother were married. They had eloped, which no one ever did in San Sebastian society, not in those days.’
Then Taber, looking uncomfortable in a black tie and dinner jacket, loomed up beside them. His red hair had been slicked down with water when he arrived, but now it was once again beginning to rebel against its combing.
‘You look absolutely elegant,’ said Carmel. ‘But where’s your tweed cap?’
‘If you think I look elegant, you’re either astigmatic or you have no taste,’ said Taber with a grin. ‘When I approach Savile Row back home, they throw up the barricades. I’m on their black list.’
McKenna introduced him to Dolores Schiller, who said, ‘I’ve heard about you, Senor Taber, from Hernando Ruiz. He admired your remark the other day, about the Indians’ patient tolerance of us criollos.’
‘I’m surprised he did,’ said Taber. ‘It was an unintentional insult to all the Ruiz. Fact is, I’m surprised I was asked to come this evening.’
‘The Ruiz have a certain tolerance of their own. Mainly because of Senora Romola.’
An elderly couple drifted by, the man tall and straight-backed, white-haired and with a military moustache, the woman with blue-rinsed grey hair and an expression of such superiority that Carmel wondered if she spoke even to her husband. They bowed to Dolores Schiller, who put out a hand to them.
‘Doctor and Senora Partridge—’ She introduced them to the McKennas and Taber.
‘Howdyoudo.’ It was all one word the way Dr Partridge said it. ‘Absolutely splendid party, what? Lots of dashed pretty gels. Always make for a jolly show.’
I’m hearing things, thought Carmel.
‘My husband is always looking at the gels,’ said Senora Partridge. ‘Still thinks he is a medical student, you know. Silly old dear, aren’t you, Bunty?’
They can’t be real, Carmel thought. These were people right out of those old British movies of the nineteen thirties that one saw on the Late Late Late Show; the Partridges belonged with Clive Brook and Constance Collier and the country cottage in the