When he saw her he had some trouble in choking back the kind of loud bass groan with tremolo that his R.A.F. friend (the Cader Idris one) used to utter at the sight of even moderately attractive women. There was nothing moderate about Emilia/Amelia. She was tall and managed to be stately and agile-looking at the same time, just as her unmade-up mouth protruded as well as being slightly thin. Under a crinkly white hat she had the darkest fair hair he had ever seen. Her wide-skirted dress and lace gloves were white too, and might have been taken a moment before out of a plastic wrapper, like the rest of her. That was clever with all this heat and dust. It was hard to imagine her doing a domestic task, unless giving orders to servants counted as that. With all this she had the cheek to look unassuming, cheerful and even friendly. She must have been about twenty but, as the R.A.F. friend would have put it, you could never tell with these foreign bints.
After staring at her for what seemed like a quarter of an hour or so, Bowen allowed himself to be introduced. Poor old Buckmaster’s still unabated nervousness prevented Bowen from fully enjoying the girl, which was a pity in a way, but if rightly viewed was also desirable.
“Well now, John, tell us of all you’ve been doing,” the Portuguese man said jauntily, looking round for chairs.
“Of course. I wonder, however …”
“Ah, a nice cool beer. Just what I fancy to have.”
“Would you mind very much …” Buckmaster said to Bowen with evident difficulty. “I have some urgent business to discuss with Dr. Lopes here, which would I fear prove excessively tedious for you young people. Perhaps you, my friend, would like to take the senhorita down to the bar at the corner for something refreshing?”
“I’m afraid she doesn’t speak a good deal of English,” Lopes said, gazing interestedly at Buckmaster. “And here on the table this beer …”
“Nonsense, I’m sure they’ll manage to get on perfectly well. Would you be so good, my friend?”
His friend would just have to be so good. “Of course, I’d be very glad to, if the senhorita has no objection.” It must all have come about through drinking that madeira, a nice little wine really, and even, as the previous evening had established, a nice big wine if you drank enough of it, hardly tasting of British sherry at all. Courtly foreign grace was what it gave you.
Meanwhile, Lopes had shrugged his shoulders and was saying a few sentences in Portuguese to the girl, who looked amiably from face to face. The last sentence was delivered in a sharper tone than the others and was followed by a grin directed at Buckmaster. The old boy didn’t notice; he could scarcely keep still with impatience. The girl nodded and smiled at Bowen. As they moved away he heard Buckmaster say something loud and expostulatory in Portuguese. It made Lopes laugh, whatever it was.
In the next few minutes it became apparent that the operating staff at the great telephone exchange—or, more precisely perhaps, the fair-sized provincial switchboard—which was Bowen’s brain were a bit under strength that day. At any rate, the circuits had begun to get clogged. Buckmaster could hardly be Strether now, not after hallo John, used to know him slightly plus urgent business, and you young people eff off and no questions welcomed. There was, naturally, a multitude of possible innocent explanations, all equally likely and unlikely, that must be chewed over at leisure, or could be by someone possessed of the requisite chewing-over fitments. That let him out, he felt. And then there was this Emilia girl. So far she had seemed adequately occupied in just striding along buxomly at his side, but it was too much to hope that this would keep her happy indefinitely. The years in London had helped him to evolve a shameful oh-really-how-incredible kind of patter adapted for female secretaries and journalists, for editresses, for real or supposed poetesses and even paintresses. It would be no good on this occasion. What would be? Suddenly he got the brilliant idea of asking Emilia if she knew anything about Buckmaster. He gave her a smile to assure her of his good intentions and, if at all possible, his sanity. Then he said: “You know Mr. Strether well, senhorita?”
“Como?” she asked. It was a word he had got to know well.
“Senhor S-t-re-ther … you know him ?”.
“Oh yes,” she said with radiant blandness, as if he had told her that an island was a piece of land entirely surrounded by water.
“Doctor Lopes … vieux amigo de Senhor S-t-re-ther?”
“Lopes—oh yes.” This time she laughed and looked rallyingly at him. Perhaps he had somehow impugned the man’s virility, or else implied that he judged it to be formidable. Whichever it was, it seemed best to leave off while he was still winning.
They turned into the road and walked along the narrow verge. Near at hand a considerable display of foreign vegetation was going on: a dehydrated affair with horny yellow-and-green leaves arranged like the spokes of a wheel grew plentifully, along with more than one sort of extraterrestrial-looking cactus, and the intervening earth, reddish in colour, was almost covered with a matt-finish creeper which would have seemed more natural creeping up something, instead of just along. Further away there were some pine-trees, if they could be that in these latitudes. Perhaps they could be, for he thought he remembered Buckmaster telling him that the nut-like things they ate instead of crisps with their madeira were really pine-needles of
