“Half a l-l-l-l-l, half a league, half a 1-1-1-league,
Half a ghleague onw-w-w-w-w-w-ward,
All in the v-v-v-v-v-v-valley of mpwdeath
Rode the s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s
…”
“This chap’s marvellous,” Oates said. Rosie had her demure smile. Bachixa, at Bannion’s side, was looking up at him urgently, perhaps getting ready to break in and ask him to come and see his motorbike. De Sousa was falling about in continuous laughter and darting his big convex eyes from face to face. He was also nudging his neighbours every few seconds: they happened to be Isabella Bannion and the tennis coach. Marchant was staring balefully at de Sousa, Rosie curiously at Mrs. Parry. The latter case gave no real difficulty, for Mrs. Parry’s nostrils were shaped like tiny mudguards and gave a far more intimate view of the inside of her nose than is at all common. But what was eating Marchant?
As Bowen leant over to ask, Marchant leant over towards him. “I say, what’s that little monkey-faced sod think he’s laughing at?”
“At Harry, I imagine,” Bowen said. “What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t like the way he’s doing it. And who is he, anyway? I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
“He’s all right, honestly. He doesn’t mean anything by it. He always laughs like that, it’s a sign of amiability.”
“Maybe, but I don’t like the way he’s doing it. And who is he, anyway?”
“Half a, half a, er—wait a minute, half a league,
Half a, what? Oh, half a mile, er, further on,
All into the, er-um, the—where’s my notes?”
“One hundred twenty escudos, if you please, sir.”
“Here, you can’t pay all that, Garnet, let me split it with you. Oh, all right, then. Noble of you. But listen: you see that little monkey-faced sod over there?”
“Obrigado … What about him?”
“Well, who is he? And what’s he think he’s laughing at?”
Bannion now sat down to a rattle of applause and much laughing congratulation. Mrs. Parry clapped with her hands parallel, like ever such a sweet little girl, and called out: “Oh Mr. Bannion, that was just simply smashing.” De Sousa was almost off his chair, his eyes showing their whites. Bachixa showed his appreciation deliberately, critically, as one who has heard a complicated modern score performed with workmanlike solidity rather than with brilliance. Mr. Parry merely filled his pipe. He had a wooden look on his wooden face.
“Oh by the way,” Oates murmured, “I don’t know whether this is quite the ideal time, but there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead, Charlie.” Bowen showed no outward emotion at the suppositions, from an upgrading of board-and-lodging payments to an avowal of love, which came unbidden to his mind.
“I may not see you in the morning and I’m going off tomorrow evening. It’s my mother-in-law, you see. You remember I told you she was looking after our baby, little Rosie? Well, she’s bringing her back in a few days and she’s going to stay on a week or two.”
“I see.” Bowen told himself that if this was leading up to a bed for him in the garage or the hen-run, then Oates, Rosie, little Rosie and mother-in-law, plus any other stray kin of anyone concerned, were going to have had their bloody chips. He would whip up a squad of awful people and pay them to dismember that shagging ginger-coloured German motorbike. Or he might even bring himself to have the “serious talk” with Oates that Barbara hourly urged.
“What I want to warn you about is that she’s not in very good health. She’s liable to have attacks and then whoever’s there has just got to rush out and get a doctor. It might well be you.”
“That’s true.” What was truer was that in cases like that it always was him; no might about it. And, Christ, wasn’t one mother-in-law enough for one man to cope with? Could this fresh one be as bad as his regular one back home? Well, she could and she couldn’t.
“That’s not all, unfortunately,” Oates was going on.
“Oh?”
“She’s basically a nice woman, but she acts rather peculiarly at times. If she takes to you she’ll do anything for you, but if not there isn’t much you can do to get on the right side of her.”
“Sort of strong likes and dislikes?”
“Well, that kind of thing. And sometimes she flies into terrible rages with people she doesn’t like. Of course it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just a thing about her.
But I thought I’d better warn you; you know, just in case.”
“Thanks, Charlie.” In Bowen’s mental projection-theatre an exophthalmic hag with a knife of traditional Portuguese pattern was chasing him round and round Oates’s “garden”, for some reason at Chaplin-revival speed and with corresponding intensity of gesture.
“But how would you feel if some brute murdered … let’s say your mother?” Bowen suddenly heard Mr. Parry ask Alec Marchant. “Or … well, your sister.” Parts of his face, for instance the mouth and eyelids, had come to life while the rest remained log-like. He resembled a Soviet chess master, from somewhere like the Uzbek Autonomous Socialist Republic rather than the Russian S.F.S.R., arrived at the bottom board of a multiple game.
“My mother’s dead and I haven’t got a sister.”
Mr. Parry nodded slowly. His mind seemed to be groping back to a parallel manoeuvre at the Tchigorin Memorial Tourney of 1950. This was to be no blitzkrieg, after all. “No,” he pronounced eventually. “All right. Take your wife, then. How would you feel if some brute murdered
