Sleeping Tiger (13 page)

“I should die of heat in my coat. Oh, why do all these horrible, horrible things have to happen?”

He tried to soothe her. “Now look…”

“No, I
won't
look!”

It was a typical example of the blind injustice of arguing with a woman, and George lost patience.

“All right then, don't look. Go and jump on the bed and cry for the rest of the day, but before you do, come and help me compose a cable to send to your bank. I'll take it into San Antonio myself, and you can stay here and sulk.”

“That's the most horrible, unfair thing to say…”

“All right, Junior, so it's horrible. Maybe I say horrible things because I'm a horrible person. It's as well you found out in good time. Now, come and sit down and put that pin-brain of yours into action and let's get this cable written.”

“I have not got a pin-brain,” Selina defended herself. “And even if I had, you haven't known me long enough to find out. All I'm saying is that I can't walk round in my underclothes all day.…”

“Look, this is Cala Fuerte San Antonio, not Queen's Gate, S.W.7. Personally, I don't care if you walk around stark naked, but I'd prefer to get hold of that money as soon as possible, and return you, unopened, as it were, to Kensington Gardens and Nanny.” He was leaning over his desk, finding a clean sheet of paper and a pencil, but now he looked up, his brown eyes unreadable, and said, “If you were older and more experienced, I rather think you'd have slapped my face by now.”

Selina told herself that if she cried, in rage, or for any other reason, she would never forgive herself. She said in a voice that shook only slightly, “The idea never entered my head.”

“Good. Don't let it.” He sat down at the desk and drew the sheet of paper towards him. “Now, the name of your bank…”

8

After the quiet, tree-shaded cool of Cala Fuerte, San Antonio that afternoon seemed hot and dusty and inordinately full. The streets were packed with traffic. Hooting cars and motor scooters, wooden donkey carts and bicycles. The narrow pavements were so crowded that pedestrians, careless of life, overflowed into the road, and George found that it was impossible to make any sort of progress without the heel of his hand more or less permanently on the horn.

The cable office and his own bank were both situated in the main plaza of the town, facing each other across the tree-lined walks and the fountains. George parked his car in a shady spot, lit a cigarette, and went, first, into the bank to see if by any chance his own money had come through from Barcelona. If it had, he planned to collect the lot in cash, tear up Selina's cable, and go then and there to the airport and buy her return ticket to London.

But the money had still not come. The cashier suggested kindly that if George would like to sit and wait for perhaps four or five hours, he would endeavour to get through to Barcelona and find out what had happened. George, in fascinated interest, asked why he would have to wait four or five hours, only to be told that the telephone was broken and had not yet been repaired.

After six years of living in the island, he was still torn between exasperation and amusement at the local attitude to time, but he said that it didn't matter, he would do without the money, and he went out of the bank, and across the square, and up the impressive stairway to the soaring marble halls of the cable office.

He copied the message out on to an official form, and then joined a slow-moving shuffling queue. When at last he reached the wire grille and it was his turn, his patience was running short. The man behind the grille had a polished brown head and a wart on his nose and spoke no English. It took him a long time to read the message, to count the words, and consult manuals. Eventually he stamped the form, and told George that it would cost ninety-five pesetas.

George paid him. “When will it get to London?”

The man eyed the clock. “To-night … maybe.”

“You'll send it off right away?”

The wart-nosed man did not deign to reply. He looked over George's shoulder. “Next, please.”

There was nothing more to be done. He went back outside, lit another cigarette, and debated on his next move. In the end he decided that it would be worth going to the Yacht Club to pick up his mail, but not worth taking the car. He started to walk.

The crowds made him feel claustrophobic. He stayed in the middle of the streets, stepping aside every now and then to let the motor traffic brush by. Overhead, small balconies bulged with humanity. Enormous, black-clad grannies sat with their embroidery, enjoying the spring sunshine. Clusters of children, their eyes like grapes, peered through the wrought-iron lace of the railings, and washing, like celebration bunting, zig-zagged from one side of the street to the other, and over all was the San Antonio smell. Of drains and fish, and cedar wood and Ideales cigarettes, overlaid with unidentifiable harbour smells that blew in from the sea.

He came to a small cross-roads and stopped on the edge of the pavement, waiting for the traffic to clear so that he could cross. A cripple, in a little booth, sold lottery tickets, and on the corner of the block was a shop, the window filled with embroidered blouses and cotton dresses and beach hats and shoes and bathing-suits.

George thought of Selina. He told himself that he could not wait to put her on the London plane, and to be rid of her, but she wouldn't be able to travel if she didn't have a dress to wear. Perhaps he should buy her a dress. But even as he went in through the door, he was visited by a second and far more amusing idea.

“
Buenos días,
Señor,” said the red-headed woman, getting up from behind her small glass counter.

“
Buenos días,
” said George, and, straight-faced, he told her what he wanted.

Five minutes later he was back in the crowded streets, carrying the little parcel wrapped so carefully in pink-and-white-striped paper. He was still grinning to himself, when the car horn blared behind him. He swore and stepped aside and the long black snout of a Citröen brushed alongside the seat of his pants, and stopped.

“Well,” said an unmistakable voice. “Look who just rode into town.”

It was Frances. She sat in her open car, looking both surprised and pleased. She wore sun-glasses and a man's straw hat tipped over her nose and a faded pink shirt. She leaned across to open the door. “Hop in and I'll take you some place.”

He got in beside her, and the leather upholstery was so hot that he felt as if he were being grilled, but before he had even shut the door Frances had moved forward again, slowly, nosing through the crowds.

She said, “I didn't expect to see you back so soon.”

“I didn't expect to be here.”

“How long have you been in?”

“Half an hour or so. I had to send a cable.”

Frances did not comment on this. Another cluster of pedestrians had gathered ahead. Fat ladies in cotton dresses and white cardigans, with very new straw hats and painfully sunburned faces. Frances's horn blared again, and they looked up, surprised, from the postcards they had been buying, and backed unresentfully up on to the already bursting pavements.

“Where the hell have they all come from?” George wanted to know.

“It's a cruise ship in. The first of the season.”

“Oh, God, has it started already?”

Frances shrugged. “You have to make the best of it. At least it brings cash into the town.” She glanced down at the little parcel in his lap. “What have you been buying at Teresa's shop?”

“How do you know it was Teresa's shop?”

“The pink-and-white-striped paper. I'm intrigued.”

George thought for a moment. He said, “It's handkerchiefs.”

“Didn't know you used them.” They had come to the main street of the town, an artery of traffic controlled by a wickedly-tempered Guardia Civil. The Citröen moved down into second gear, and Frances said, “Where'd you want to go?”

“There might be some mail at the Yacht Club.”

“Didn't you pick it up yesterday?”

“Yes, but there might be some more.”

She glanced at him sideways. “Did you get home all right?”

“Sure.”

“Boat O.K. ?”

“Yes, she's all right. Did you get that second storm yesterday evening?”

“No, it missed us.”

“You were lucky. It was a corker.”

They waited at the traffic lights until the red changed to green, then Frances turned down a narrow street and on to the broad harbour road. This was George's favourite part of San Antonio, packed with cheerful little waterfront bars, and ships' chandlers, smelling of tar and grain and paraffin. The harbour was filled with craft. Island schooners, and yachts, and the Barcelona boat, getting steam up to sail, and the cruise ship, from Bremen, tied up at the north pier.

He saw a strange yacht, new since yesterday. He said, “She's flying a Dutch flag.”

“A young people called Van Trikker, doing a circumnavigation.” Frances made it her business to find these things out.

“Through the Mediterranean?”

“Well, why not? That's what the Suez Canal is for.”

He grinned. Frances leaned forward and took a pack of cigarettes out of the dashboard shelf and handed it to him, and he took it and lit one for himself and one for her. When they got to the Yacht Club, he went inside for his mail, and Frances sat and waited for him, and when he returned with two letters stuffed in the back pocket of his pants, she said, “Where now?”

“I'm going to have a drink.”

“I'll come with you.”

“Oughtn't you to be selling original Olaf Svensens to all those lovely tourists?”

“I have a young student working for me. She can take care of the Germans.” She turned the car in a single sweep. “I'd much rather take care of you.”

They went to Pedro's, a little way along the road. Pedro had pulled some tables and chairs out on to the wide pavement, and they sat in the shade of a tree, and George ordered a beer for himself and cognac for Frances.

She said, “Daring, you're very abstemious all of a sudden.”

“I have a genuine thirst.”

“I hope it isn't painful.”

She reached around his back for the letters he had stuffed in his pocket and laid them on the table in front of him and said, “Open them.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm curious. I like to know what's in letters, especially other people's. I don't like to think of them ageing gracefully, like well-bred old ladies. Here.…” She picked a knife off the carelessly-laid table, and slit the flaps of the envelopes. “Now all you have to do is take them out and read them.”

Humouring her, George did so. The first contained a letter from a yachting magazine to say that they would pay him eight pounds ten shillings for an article he had submitted to them.

He handed this over to Frances and she read it, and said, “There, what did I tell you? Good news.”

“Better than nothing.” He took out the second letter.

“What was the article about?”

“Self-steering gears.”

She patted his back. “Well, aren't you a clever boy.… Who's that one from?”

It was from his publisher, but he was reading the letter, and did not hear the question.

George Dyer, Esq.,

Club Nautica,

San Antonio,

Baleares,

Spain.

Dear Mr. Dyer,

I have written you no fewer than five letters over the last four months in the hope that you would be able to let us have at least some sort of synopsis for a second book as a follow-up to
Fiesta at Cala Fuerte.
I have not had a rely to any of them. All these letters were addressed to the Club Nautica at San Antonio, and I am now wondering whether perhaps this is no longer your Poste Restante.

As I pointed out when we agreed to publish
Fiesta at Cala Fuerte,
a follow-up is important if we are to maintain the public's interest in you as a writer.
Cala Fuerte
has sold well and is into its third printing, and negotiations are under way for a paperback; but we must have a second book from you soon, if your sales are not to deteriorate.

It is unfortunate that we were unable to meet personally and discuss this matter, but I think I made it clear when we agreed to publish
Fiesta at Cala Fuerte
that we could only do it on condition that it would be the first of a series, and I was under the impression that you understood this.

In any event, I should be grateful for a reply to this letter.

Yours sincerely,

A
RTHUR
R
UTLAND

He read this through twice and then dropped it on the table. The waiter had brought their drinks, and the beer was so cold that it frosted the tall glass, and when he put his hand around it it was an actual pain, like touching ice.

Frances said, “Who's it from?”

“Read it.”

“I don't want to read it if you'd rather I didn't.”

“Oh, read the thing.”

She did so, and he drank his beer.

She reached the bottom of the page, and said, “Well, I think that's the hell of a letter. Who does he think he is?”

“My publisher.”

“For heaven's sake, you're under no contract!”

“Publishers don't like one-book men, Frances. They want either nothing at all, or a good steady stream.”

“He's written to you before?”

“Yes, of course he has. He's been on at me for the last four or five months. That's why I've given up opening my letters.”

“Have you
tried
to write a second book?”

“Tried? I've ruptured myself trying. What the hell am I to write it about? I only wrote the first one because I thought I was running out of money, and it was a long, chilly winter. I never thought I'd get it published.”