Authors: Unknown
‘Oh, no, quite the reverse. I like travelling. And anyway, H.E. said we would be there and back in the one day.’
‘So,' Mr. Fitzgerald said with heavy emphasis, '
we
will.'
‘H.E. and me,' I said firmly.
‘No, Miss Bradley,' he corrected. ‘You and I.'
So on Tuesday morning, in the inexorable fullness of time, I found myself seated beside James Fitzgerald on the hour-long inter-city flight between Quicha and Belanga.
The aircraft was small and well worn; take-off into the sunny mountainscape was long and laboured. But I found the narrowness of the seats and the proximity to Mr. Fitzgerald more alarming than anything else.
Mr. Fitzgerald had chosen our seats. Charaguayans, in common with the rest of their Latin American brethren, take to the air like a Londoner takes to a bus. Everyone crowds on with their luggage and their baskets and even cages of domestic fowls.
Mr. Fitzgerald had leaned over to fasten my seat belt. His face then was almost as close to mine as Don Ramón's had been on my first flight out here to Charaguay. Mr. Fitzgerald had shown me how to adjust the air flow, ordered iced
naranjillo
, asked me if I wanted a magazine. His relaxed competence made me feel an unfledged traveller, which until a few weeks ago I suppose I was. His masculinity made me feel feminine and weak.
But worst of all, I felt beneath his scrupulous care of me a deliberate neutrality. He performed whatever courtesy or duty which was required, but totally without personal commitment.
I couldn’t blame him, because I had done the same. I’d taken Mrs. Mallenport’s advice on clothes, simply because I couldn’t risk a repeat performance of Madame Odette’s. So I was wearing a well tailored fawn trouser suit, and teamed it up with a silk shirt of deep blue. I’d washed my hair last night, and Bianca had made me a lotion of mountain herbs that did wonders for it. I’d also broken into the special bottle of French perfume my stepfather had bought me last Christmas. I felt armed— though against what enemy I didn’t know.
Luckily, the efforts were for my own morale and not for any effect they might have on my travelling companion, because he certainly didn’t notice them. Except when, at altitude the cabin grew unbearably hot, and I began to wriggle out of my jacket.
‘Here, let me,' James Fitzgerald said, courteously helping it from my shoulders. He eyed my beautiful blue blouse with some disfavour. ‘Sure that thing will be warm enough?’ he asked.
‘It’s silk. It should be.'
‘The mountainside can be very cold, especially on the way back. Eve usually brought along a little woollen thing—a tank top, I think you call them.’
‘I don’t like tank tops,’ I said childishly. ‘They don’t suit me.’
He smiled in a nostalgic way as if he were thinking, though not aloud, ‘But they suit Eve.'
In a bitter and peevish reply to his unspoken comment, I exclaimed, ‘It must be nice to be absolutely perfect!’
He looked intently at my flushed face. ‘Whom do you mean?'
‘Eve, of course.'
He smiled. It was an inward, baffling smile. ‘No one is
absolutely
perfect,’ he replied after considerable thought. ‘People aren’t jewels. Everyone has faults—that’s what makes them human. But then one is fond of people for those faults as much as for their virtues.’
A fleeting look crossed his stern face—infinitely revealing, infinitely tender. I sipped my delicious cold drink in silence. It suddenly tasted bitter as gall.
Had I been a betting woman, I know where I’d have put my money in the love game which so intrigued Morag. On that absent contender, the beautiful, the matchless Eve Trent.
In fact Eve Trent seemed to travel with us. Inevitably as Mr. Fitzgerald briefed me about the earthquake warning system at Belanga, her name cropped up frequently. There was her firm legible writing in the file Mr. Fitzgerald showed me.
And when we landed at the small airfield of Belanga (which was just that, a large field with two huts and a control tower) I saw three mountain ponies making the best of the airport facilities, and cropping the grass beside the single runway near the battered bus that was to take the rest of our passengers into town. It was a fanciful idea, but I could imagine that third animal was not simply a pack-pony for the supplies, but for an invisible unshakeoffable Eve, very much with us in spirit, if not in person.
For all that, it was an incredibly beautiful ride up the mountain. There was a single bridle track winding round over stony scree and across little frothy streams, through wild tropical woodland alight with blossoms and multicoloured birds, beneath giant gum and eucalyptus trees, and then climbing higher and higher into cool dark fir woods. Every few minutes there were glimpses across the valley below to the old Inca silver mining town and the jungle green snake of a wide river.
The sun shone at its zenith, hot and brilliant, but the shade within the fir woods was cold and fragrant with pine needles and damp earth. Through it all, the well trained ponies clumped their way, blowing occasionally through their nostrils. They smelled warm and animal and comforting. I felt oddly in need of comfort.
James Fitzgerald led the way with me following—just like the Indians, really. The pack-horse with the invisible and invincible Eve brought up the rear. I imagined that when she had come on the inspection visit, the air would have rung with her witty conversation and her gay laughter. Perhaps Mr. Fitzgerald or even H.E. might stop to gather her some flowers—the orchids that grew as plentifully as buttercups, or those pale waxy flowers like giant magnolias.
I had a splendid but disturbing view of the back of Mr. Fitzgerald’s broad shoulders, the set of his neck, the arrogant carriage of his head, against the changing backcloth of the mountain scenery. That view drew my eyes and filled my mind to the exclusion of everything else. My pony followed his uncomfortably close. When the path permitted, it nudged up beside his. But Mr. Fitzgerald remained abstracted until the last turn in the path brought us in sight of the gleaming structure on the crest of the mountain.
‘There she is,' he pointed, ‘a monument to the generosity of the British public, prefabrication and the patience of the pack-horse.’ He smiled over his shoulder at the third of our animals as if it did indeed carry the matchless Eve.
I followed the direction of Mr. Fitzgerald’s pointing finger. I saw a modern single-storey structure with a domed aluminium roof. It had wide windows, and a white-painted balcony. Two figures were on the balcony waving.
‘This is the event of the month for them,' James Fitzgerald told me. ‘They’ll be all decked out in their Sunday best, looking forward to talking to someone else. Eve used to . . .’ He stopped himself.
‘Of course,’ I murmured flatly, ‘they’ll be expecting Eve. They’ll be disappointed.’
‘Oh, never mind. You’ll be a fresh face to show off their toys to.’
It was a very small consolation prize for both them and me.
In true Charaguayan style, the two men, Luis and Sanchez, made the most of the consolation prize. And so did I. While their Indian helper unloaded the stores from the pack-horse, I was shown the huge modern seismograph, giant barometers, celestial charts. They demonstrated an electric device, like British Rail’s newest signal junction box, on which sensitive areas of the earth’s crust were marked by blips which glowed red at the first sign of renewed activity, and showed me a map of the R/T early warning stations, by which the threatened areas could be given the red alert, and I admired their generator, polished and oiled as a Rolls- Royce engine. After a cold lunch on the balcony, while Mr. Fitzgerald discussed complaints and suggestions with the two men, I copied out the daily log (listed the seventy-three minor tremors that had taken place in the last month), took notes of repairs, and adjustments needed, stores required, and stuck in the amendments to their scientific manuals.
It was three-thirty and the sun was almost mathematically at an angle of forty-five degrees when we began the homeward trek, in ample time for the six o’clock plane to Quicha. The afternoon was warm and still and full of the fragrance of mountain flowers. Fed, watered and rested, our mounts went briskly. Light of its load, the pack-pony followed skittishly behind me.
At the bend in the path we reined in and turned. Our two hosts were still waving enthusiastically on the balcony.
‘They obviously liked you,’ Mr. Fitzgerald smiled over his shoulder.
I glowed with pleasure. Why then did some mischief in me have to ask of such a truthful man, ‘As much as Eve?’
At first I thought he hadn’t heard me. When the path was wide enough he slackened his pony’s pace for me to come abreast of him. Then he said, ‘Surely, liking is a feeling. It isn’t something you can measure, now is it?’ Clearly he was being diplomatic, and the answer was no.
‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘with liking between men and women,’ he frowned, picking his way among his words as our ponies picked their way amongst the treacherous tree roots, ‘there’s always an added element.’
‘Of what?’
‘Come, you’re not a child. Of physical attraction.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, flicking a glance over my shoulder towards the now invisible seismograph station, ‘that those two are in love with her as well?’
The path narrowed into the darkness of the pine wood. Mr. Fitzgerald pressed his knees against the pony’s side and led the way. But first he flicked me a glance of mild reproof. ‘Not Luis, no, of course not. He’s got a grown-up family. But Sanchez, yes, perhaps. Or, in the way of these Charaguayans, it amuses him to
imagine
that he is.’
‘But he’ll soon get over it, no doubt,’ I replied, raising myself in the saddle, the better to make my voice carry—unnecessarily, for the wood was absolutely silent. But I was stung by his peremptory dismissal of a humble rival’s feelings, by the comment on Charaguayans
amusing
themselves by imagining they were in love, which I knew had special reference to Don Ramon and me. And something else that defied definition, but which gave my anger a more bitter edge.
‘No doubt at all,’ Mr. Fitzgerald replied, equally loud and clear. And as if to give weight to his words, the ground beneath our feet rumbled and shook. I heard the sudden rasp and creak of the branches of the pine, then everything happened together, like a jumbled-up film clip.
Something hard hit my pony’s rump. I had a glimpse of Mr. Fitzgerald’s face, as he swung round, his hand grabbing my bridle, then my vision filled with spinning trees, a sensation of flying. A kaleidoscope of fragmented colours. And then total absolute darkness.
When I opened my eyes again, I couldn’t think where I was. Remembrance returned slowly. I thought I’d been asleep, because I seemed to have dreamed—a delicious dream. I’d been with Don Ramón again in the darkness of the hacienda garden. Once again he had kissed me, very gently this time on my forehead. All around it was dusky, with sunlight just pricking through the giant trees like miniature stars. The air was full of mountain fragrance, just as it had been that night. A man bent over me, his head and shoulders outlined against the soft twilight, his face dark. I tried to focus my eyes, to separate dream from reality.
‘Don Ramon?’
The man did not immediately reply. Then he said slowly in James Fitzgerald’s familiar, and yet somehow different voice, ‘No. I’m sorry to disappoint you.’ His tone acquired a cruelly sarcastic edge. ‘You were not out long enough for Don Ramon to be summoned.’ He stretched out his hand and placed it on my forehead as if he was determined to blot out the harmless dream kiss too.
‘Are we still in the pine wood?’ I raised my head, but it hurt. Something woolly tickled my chin. It was grey and large and comforting and finally identifiable as Mr. Fitzgerald’s sweater. I was lying on the pine needles. They were soft and sweet-smelling. The trees had stopped their sudden frantic shudderings. The ponies nosed idly and calmly a few yards away. Mr. Fitzgerald was kneeling at my side, bending over me, scanning my face. It could have looked such a romantic picture to a casual observer who didn’t know the circumstances.
‘How long was I out?’
‘Fifty-two seconds.’
‘Oh,’ I sighed. It would have seemed more dignified if I had been out longer. Perhaps if I’d done a proper job as Eve had done.
‘The ponies were frightened by the earth tremor. The pack-pony cannoned into yours.’
Trust Eve, I thought, and then was immediately ashamed of my flagrant injustice.
‘And you weren’t prepared.’ He shook his head chidingly. But then he lifted my hand so gently that I thought it was to show that under the circumstances he didn’t really mean any reproof. My throat thickened emotionally at this inexplicable gentleness. But it wasn’t that at all. He was looking at the graze on the back of my hand, which till then I hadn’t even felt, but which now began to sting. Carefully, he picked off fragments of pinebark, and bits of grit.
‘Now your head. Lean forward.' He smiled rather sweetly. ‘Let’s take a look at that place that doesn’t know how to rule your heart.’ His fingers explored my scalp. ‘Mmm, not quite as big as a pigeon’s egg. I don’t think you’ve done any real damage, but we’ll just have to make sure. Legs all right?’
I nodded, and raised first one and then the other.
‘Good.’ He smiled as one might to a child, ‘We don’t want you doing another Eve.’ And as one might to a child, he began unhurriedly and without embarrassment to unbutton my blouse. I closed my eyes tight. I wondered if in that clinical exploration of my rib cage he felt the wild beating of my heart.
I opened my eyes again, when he said cheerfully, ‘O.K., nothing feels to be broken. Better get the M.O. to look you over tomorrow, though. Our jungle survival medicine doesn’t run to X-ray eyes.'
He straightened, and smiled. ‘Now put my sweater on properly. I’m going to dab something on that graze, then you should survive the journey home.'