“I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can. Is there anything else I can get you before I go?”
“Nothing, thank you.” Buckmaster smiled diffidently. He looked, with the blanket round his shoulders, like an old Red Indian, the wise one who keeps saying that the white man is his brother and there must be no more blood. “How kind you are being to me, my friend, my dear Bowen. What a blessing to be in such good hands.”
In hands, anyway, Bowen thought to himself as he hurried off towards the road. He couldn’t help feeling glad that so far he had been able to give all the things the situation had required of him, and such nasty things at the start, too. Then he felt less glad at the thought that not to have hesitated for that moment before rushing out of his bedroom might have saved Buckmaster from falling or being pushed down the steps, curse it. Might it? Would it? Probably it might and would, because he had always been that sort of chap. He badly wanted Barbara to suddenly manifest herself and tell him that of course it mightn’t and wouldn’t and he hadn’t and wasn’t. He hoped there was nothing still to come tonight which would find him wanting. There were plenty of things which would to choose from. He was that sort of chap too. Quite a number of his actions and attitudes had in the past struck him as unworthy of a man of his alleged sensibility, or a man of his age, or a man, but doing the necessary things about it was hard. Hard not because he didn’t want to change, but because keeping on the alert for being mature and responsible and so on took it out of him. It was so seldom one got the amber light that would give one time to get everything nicely lined up for a spot of mature etc. behaviour. It would be quite okay if only he could manage to be a writer. Perhaps it wasn’t too late even now. He remembered a woman with two Book Society Choices to her name telling him that the first qualification for being a writer was to be interested in yourself. Well, he ought to be well in, then.
He found Madrigal’s house without difficulty and rang the bell hard and long. Get it over quickly. After a time a light went on upstairs, a head appeared at the window and a woman’s voice asked him something.
“Senhor Madrigal?”
“Nos da,” she seemed to say.
“What? I mean como?”
“Nos da, senhor.”
He nearly broke down and cried at the thought of this fiendish conspiracy, the near-martyrdom at Buckmaster’s designed only to lead up to him being bidden good-night in the language of his native Wales.
“Nos da, senhor,” the woman repeated. “Lisboa.” He could see her pointing. “Lisboa.”
He got that all right. Why was everybody away tonight, then? Why hadn’t he been prepared for this sort of thing? But he could hardly have been expected to copy down a little bilingual word-list at Buckmaster’s dictation, could he? What the hell, then? “Momento, senhora,” he said. (Good stuff.) “0 senhor inglês.” What was “hurt”? Might be anything. What was “ill”? “Malade, malado, souffrant, souffrowng, souffranty.”
“Não compreendo.”
Oh, Christ. What information about o senhor inglês would he be bringing to a doctor’s house at this time? That the old boy wanted someone to scratch his behind for him? He went through a short ballet in the moonlight, wishing Emilia had got as far as “leg” in her language-lesson. He pointed to his own leg. What about it? “Not good”; that would do it. “Não bom, não bom.”
He gave some yelps of simulated pain; this time he was reminded of Afilhado’s “owr, owr-owr” routine. It all got a silent reception. “Mêdico,” he said desperately— he had got that off the doctor’s sign on the Rio Grande:
“un autre … um autro médico.”
“Outro médico, sim sim sim, compreendo. Something or other trese kilometros.”
Thirteen bloody kilometres. That meant, what? sixty-five … eight miles as near as damn it, and shag it, and sod it. Eight miles one furlong, to be exact. Two hours at the very least. “O carro ?” he asked, thinking that here at least was a sensible word.
There was more nos da and Lisboa stuff. Naturally. Madrigal would hardly have walked to Lisbon. No flies on Madrigal. Right. Setting his teeth, Bowen said:
“O carro du, do senhor inglês.”
“Sim ?” So what? her tone said.
“O addresso do médico? No good? Er … a casa do médico? Where does he hang out, ducks?”
“Compreendo. Something momento.”
There was quite a long pause after the woman’s head withdrew. It was a relief to have finished with dumb-crambo and word-making and word-taking for a bit. He heard the woman open a drawer. She must be getting dressed. She was going to take him there. All over bar the shouting. What would she be like? Pretty good if her voice was any guide. Mm. Were hornets active at night?
She wasn’t going to take him there. Something pitched into the dust at his feet. It turned out to be a piece of paper wrapped round an empty scent-bottle. There was writing on the paper and what looked like a sketch map. Oh well, you couldn’t blame her; she had put up with a lot and been very decent about it all. “Obrigado,” he called.
“Bôa noite, senhor.”
“Bôa noite, senhora. Obrigado very much.”
He went back to Buckmaster and told him the score. The old fellow listened with an admirable effort at cheerfulness, but it was plain that his leg was giving him hell and he was getting cramped. “If only I had had the
