‘On those horrid tables?’ said Northey, interested.
‘But how do they have time?’ I asked. ‘I always seem to be in too much of a hurry to sleep with people at the customs.’
‘Next time you must try Grandad’s way – no hurry. The trouble is you travel soft. You don’t know what a journey can be like when you go cheap – it beats imagination. The Leisure, the Pleasure! The waits are endless, whole days sometimes – hours to spare at every frontier you come to. Of course the douaniers, being in uniform, get the pick. The older ladies are obliged to pay waiters and beach attendants and such like.’
‘I thought they had no money?’
‘They tear off their jewels.’
‘Well then, just tell the programme. You go sight-seeing or what?’
‘Nothing whatever. The British female goes abroad for romance and that’s that.’
‘Ay de mi!’ said Northey, ‘how true!’
‘And the men? Aren’t Spanish women very much guarded?’
‘The men usually arrive dead beat. They take the journey worse than the women do and fury tires their hearts. They just have the energy to strip and peel. I don’t think they would ever manage – you know, in the state they are in. Besides, their emotions and energies, if any, are concentrated on revenge.’
‘And how do you spend your time?’ I vaguely hoped for an account of advanced lessons in Spanish.
‘Me? I lie on my face on the beach. It’s safer. Once we’ve arrived at the place and they’ve seen where they’ve got to doss down and when they’ve smelt the food, redolent of rancidol, which they are expected to press down, the younger male Britons have only one idea. Señoritas be blowed – they just want to kick my lemon – give me a fat lip, see? So I lie there, camouflaged by protective colouring. My back is black, but my face is white; they don’t connect the two and I am perfectly all right providing I never turn over. When the day comes for going home they need me too much to injure me.’
‘Goodness, Basil!’
‘You may well say so. Where’s Father?’
‘He’s been in London – back any time now. Look, darling, I haven’t told him about your summer – I didn’t know anything for certain – so let him think, what I rather hoped myself, that you were polishing up your pure Castilian. He might not like the idea of you – well –’
‘Carting out the rubbish?’
‘Oh dear, no, he wouldn’t like it. But I don’t think we need tell him. Now the holidays are over and you’ll be going back to your crammer I think we might, without being deceitful, forget the whole thing?’
‘Only I’m not going back to the crammer. That wasn’t a holiday, Ma – funny sort of hol that would be – no, it’s my career, my work, my future.’
‘Lying on your face in the sand is?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re giving up the Foreign Service?’
‘You bet.’
‘Basil!’
‘Now listen, Mother dear, the Foreign Service has had its day – enjoyable while it lasted no doubt, but over now. The privileged being of the future is the travel agent. He lives free, travels soft – don’t think he shares the sufferings of his people, he has a first-class sleeper, the best room in the hotel. Look at me now, washed, shaved, relaxed and rested. I only wish you could see my victims at this moment! Haven’t taken their clothes off for days. Some of them stood the whole way last night while I lay at my ease. Even during a railway strike you’ve only got to exhibit the armband and the officials will do anything for you. You see we hold the national tourist industries in the hollow of our hands. There’s nothing they dread more than a lot of unorganized travellers wandering about their countries exhibiting individualism. They’d never force a tourist on his own into those trams and hotels – he’d go home sooner. But you can do anything with a herd and the herd must have its drover. As he keeps the tickets and the money and the passports (no worry) even the most recalcitrant of the cattle are obliged to follow him. No good jibbing when the conditions are ghastly because what is the alternative? To be stranded without hope of succour. So the authorities need us; the tourists need us; we are paramount. Oh, it’s a wonderful profession and I’m lucky to have the family backing which got me into it.’
My blood ran cold at these words. I have seen the promise of too many young men fade away as the result of taking a wrong step after leaving their university not to feel appalled at the prospect of this brilliant boy, easily my favourite child, thus jeopardizing his future. There is no sadder spectacle than that of a lettered beachcomber, a pass to which Basil seemed to have come in three short months.
‘And your first in history,’ I said, ‘your gift for languages – all to be wasted?’
‘It’s no good, Ma, you’ll have to be realistic about this. The world isn’t like it was when you were young. There’s more opportunity, more openings for a chap than there were then. You can’t really expect me to swot away and get into the Foreign Service and put up with an aeon of boredom simply to end my days in a ghastly great dump like this? I love Father, you know I do, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’ve no intention of wasting the best years of my life like he has and nothing you can say will persuade me to. So now, having partaken of this smashing breakfast, for which I’m truly grateful,
