Arriving at the chalet without mishap, Barbara dropped Bowen there while she went on into the village to pick up the mail. It was now his task to pump up water from the well into the tank to provide for the making of tea, the preparation of baths, etc. He liked this job: it made him feel all son-of-the-soil without much exertion. During it he talked cheerfully to the hobbled piglet the Bannions had given them, trying to forget that it was destined to become roast pork in a few weeks. Afterwards he greeted the mangy stray cat and emaciated stray dog adopted by Barbara on her arrival, then went to see if the toad was still in his crevice under the garden wall. He was, looking in excellent trim, but as usual trying to pretend he wasn’t there. Bowen went into the house, where others of God’s creatures were buzzing phrenetically about. He got going with the fly-squirter; it was wonderful having one of his own after the meagre goes with Oates’s instrument he had been allowed. He gave his and Barbara’s bedroom special attention. Last night he had sat up in bed reading Elizabeth Taylor and squirting the enemy by turns, thinking this a happy combination of pastimes, but Barbara had objected to the way dying insects kept falling into her hair and on to her face and bare shoulders, so he had had to stop. There was always some snag about out-of-the-way pleasures.
He went into the sitting-room, where his work-table was. Here were grounds, he thought, for some complacency and self-congratulation. The article for See magazine and two others lay there in draft-or substantial note-form; a 1200-word review of a work on the Bloomsbury group, sent to him at Oates’s, awaited only its covering letter; Teach Him a Lesson had got on to page 35; a couple of sheets of jottings about Buckmaster/ Strether were ready in case. Oh, not bad at all. And beyond the typewriter stood a more reliable aid to wellbeing: a full bottle of medronha with a kind of tree inside it. A local liqueur resembling calvados, but made from an arboreal strawberry-like fruit, it was an excellent nightcap, especially after a few glasses of vinho tinto and a port or two and a brandy or two. But the sight of it at this moment must have had some triggering effect on Bowen’s alimentary canal. From inside him came a sound like that of distant but approaching horsemen. He ran into the lavatory.
When he came out he found Barbara just arriving with the post. She said: “Nothing from Mummy. I hope she’s all right.”
“Of course she is. You’ll hear tomorrow. She’ll only just have got your letter telling her the new address.”
“I wish I’d sent it to her sooner.”
“You couldn’t have done. You wrote the moment you knew.”
“Perhaps she’s sent one to Oates’s place.”
“Well, if she has he’ll forward it.”
She did her vigorous head-shake, inhaling and shutting her eyes. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”
“Oh, nonsense, he wouldn’t do anything he thought was nasty.”
“What about that extra cash he took off us?”
“He didn’t think that was nasty. He thought he was entitled to that.”
“But it was nasty, whatever he thought about it.”
“That doesn’t make any difference; he didn’t think it was nasty.”
“I think it makes all the difference,” she said stoutly. “Well yes, in general it does, but we’re talking about Oates doing or not doing things he thinks are nasty.”
“I can’t see why that should be special.”
“It isn’t special, dear. All I’m saying is that if he thinks a thing’s nasty he doesn’t do it, probably.”
“But surely the important thing is that he does do nasty things when he doesn’t think they’re nasty.”
“I was only trying to establish …”
“Sandra, leave those things alone in there.” She sped out of the room.
Bowen sighed, then grinned, then stopped grinning. Here was a letter addressed in Oates’s neat writing. A demand for more money? Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
He ripped it open to find what must be a cable inside. Oates had written on it in pencil.: Sorry this is delayed but I was away shooting at the weekend and Rosie didn’t know your address. Do hope everything turns out alright.
Kindest regards—C.J.C.O. The sender of the cable was
Mrs. Knowles’s next-door neighbour and the text ran: PLEASE RETURN IMMEDIATELY MOTHER VERY ILL.
13
BOWEN SAT ON the veranda of Buckmaster’s house, a glass of madeira before him. He was thinking about Barbara, whom he had seen off on the plane for London, together with the kids, ten days earlier. Arranging their air passages, plus fixing up to get the car taken back on its own by sea, plus cancelling four steamer tickets and changing to a single berth for his own return trip, had given firm promise of coalescing into the most mountainous bum that had ever confronted him, but just in time he had remembered Bennie Hyman’s agent in Lisbon. The agent, on whom somebody had done a splendid job of combining de Sousa and Bachixa, had smiled and made three phone calls. The tone of the first one had been of a cringing self-abasement, of the second a bawling maniacal fury, of the third an insultingly cynical detachment. He had used his face and whole body and all four limbs as well as just his voice, reducing the Bowen children to an immobile silence they had not shown since leaving their television set. After the performance the agent, once more de Sousa-Bachixa, had smiled a second time and asked if the lady could
