Poor Angus

by Robin Jenkins

  What else could he do? Janet, apparently so devoted to Fidelia, had deserted her. He did not know what was going to happen tomorrow when Gomez came but, whatever it was, he was determined to have no part in it. He might not even remain in the house while the bargaining was going on. He had never had any authority, not of that kind anyway, and he was not prepared to claim any now. He was sure Fidelia would understand.

  Letty did, as she soon showed. Instead of going upstairs with her mother, she hung about outside for a while and then came knocking at his door.

  He was surprised as well as annoyed. He had heard Janet and Nell warning her not to disturb him while he was an his studio, and she had kept well away from him.

  She kept on knocking. ‘Mr McAllister,’ she said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  He could think of nothing that he could usefully say to her. ‘I’m busy,’ he called.

  ‘No, you’re not. I looked in the window. You’re just sitting.’

  ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you let me in.’

  ‘Your mother needs you.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. She’s just praying.’

  The scorn that she put into those words caused him, an agnostic, to shiver. She was too young to have dismissed God.

  He got up and opened the door.

  She went in. Though she wasn’t there as an art critic, she stared for a minute or so at ‘Taurus’. Is that supposed to be a painting?’ she asked.

  ‘It will be when it’s finished.’

  ‘I think it’s stupid. Was it you who painted the birds and butterflies on the stairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re nice. I like them. I don’t like this, and I don’t like the picture of my mother in your room. Why do like painting ladies with no clothes on?’

  He could find no ready answer.

  She wasn’t going to argue about it. These were preliminary palavers.

  ‘Can I sit down, please?’

  ‘If you can find a seat.’

  She upturned a wastepaper bucket and sat on it. ‘You sit down too.’

  He sat down.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ she said.

  He did not have to ask why. He knew. He had made use of her mother and now was abandoning her. The child was justified in not liking him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You don’t care if I like you or not.’

  Was that true? If it was, it meant that he was even more callous than he had thought. But yes, it was true. He did not care whether anyone liked him or not. It was an admission that would haunt him till the day he died but it had to be made.

  ‘Do you like my mother?’ she asked.

  Who had put her up to asking these questions? If Janet had been there, he would have blamed her. He could never have blamed Fidelia. She had always sought to build up his self-esteem, never to destroy it.

  Letty was finding the questions herself. She was still waiting for an answer.

  ‘Yes, I like your mother.’

  She did not ask, as Janet and Nell would have done, why, if he liked Fidelia, he was doing nothing to help her. Nor did she accuse him of lying. She seemed to accept that he did like her mother, but it didn’t matter, his liking of her mother wasn’t important.

  ‘My father’s coming here tomorrow, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Have you ever met your father?’

  ‘No, but I’ve seen him, in a photograph.’

  He wasn’t surprised to hear that Fidelia had kept a photograph of her husband. Perhaps it had been added to the saints on her shrine.

  ‘My father’s got lots of money.’

  Who had told her? Her mother? Also impressed by Gomez’s wealth? It was possible.

  ‘He’s coming to take me away.’

  Had her mother told her that too? What else? That if she wanted to go with her father, her mother would not try to stop her? Fidelia the martyr.

  He should have kept out of it. ‘Do you want to go with him?’ he asked.

  After a long pause she replied: ‘If my mother can come too.’

  Was that Fidelia’s hope? That Gomez would want them both? Was that what she was praying for? Well, she would make a good submissive wife. Was their story going to have a happy ending after all? He hoped so. He would claim no credit but he would share in the general relief. Could he, he wondered, interest Gomez in buying the portrait of Fidelia? It was his masterpiece so far but if he got rid of her in person it might be as well to get rid of her also as a painting.

  Letty, he saw, had none of her mother’s primitive reverence. Though brought up a Catholic, she already had more faith in money than in prayer as a producer of miracles. In Basah it had been part of Fidelia’s charm. Here it was more like a mental retardation. She could never be happy in this temperate, thin-lipped, pink-skinned, sceptical country. It would have been cruelty to try to keep her here.

  When he went up to bed he locked his door. It was the first time he had ever done so. He had had to search for the key.

  He had been in bed for half an hour or so when he remembered he had forgotten to put out bread for the demons. As he lay wondering whether he should get up and do it, he became aware that there was someone in the lobby and then his door handle turned. It could only be Fidelia. She had waited till Letty was asleep. But what did she want? What did she have to say to him or offer him that would make any difference? Although she was silent, hardly breathing, he could tell that she was waiting outside the door. Perhaps she was considering whether to call his name and beg him to let her in. If she did, he would go on pretending to be asleep. He thought he heard her softly weeping, but it could have been his imagination.

  At last she went away. He heard the floorboards creaking. Wondering as to what her purpose could have been, he forgot the bread for the demons.

  19

  Next morning Fidelia appeared in the living-room dressed in sarong and kebaya, red with black dragon designs, surely pagan in origin. She had a gold crucifix round her neck. Was this display of Oriental beauty and Catholic piety intended to impress Gomez?

  Leaving her to make breakfast for herself and Letty, he went out to walk on the beach, with Janet’s imaginary monks. It was a glorious morning. Never had Ardnave, indeed all of Flodday, looked more heavenly. Since it was Sunday, there might be an invasion of tourists and natives, undeterred by the notices Beware of the Bull, which he had persuaded Mr McCandlish to put up.

  He had on his green corduroy suit and a clean white shirt. Whatever other role he ought to be playing, he was at any rate the host. Earlier, when washing, he had seen how thinner and more austere his face had grown during the past week.

  He had still to decide what he should do when the visitors came. He could approach them courteously, saying that Mrs Gomez and her daughter were in the house waiting, and then he could go for a meditative walk on the machair. Or he could accompany the visitors into the house. In the latter case, what attitude should he adopt? He had no right to interfere between a husband and wife. Were even the police not reluctant to do so? Perhaps he could best help by sitting in wise silence, like another Buddha.

  He saw Letty making faces at him out of an upstairs window. He moved behind the rocks that Janet had mistaken for monks.

  He heard the car before he saw it. Black as a hearse, it came slowly along the track towards the house. Were its occupants admiring the scenery?

  He went up the path past the monks’ privy and approached the car, which had stopped outside the house. The chauffeur got out and opened the door. Gomez was first to emerge. He was wearing a white suit with red-toed shoes. He took off his hat and revealed black hair glistening with sweet oil. Immediately flies came from cowpats to besiege him. Peevishly he tried to drive them off with his hat. Here he had no hired thugs to protect him.

  The lawyer was older and more soberly dressed. He was carrying a briefcase. />
  Gomez caught sight of Angus’s shrine. He was not sure of its significance. Did he take it to be Catholic, with the Virgin and Child missing? With his left hand he vaguely crossed himself.

  Angus did not offer to shake hands. His posture must be one of serene impartiality.

  ‘Señor Gomez?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Gomez’s eyes, like Fidelia’s, like all Asia’s, were brown, but his were also sly and knowing. What they knew was the price of everything. Love could be bought as easily as gold tiepins by someone with as much money as he.

  Still, if Angus was to be true to his role of Buddha’s understudy, he had to be unprejudiced and fair. In Manila Gomez was probably a man of substance and respectability, friendly with bishops and politicians.

  His eyes appraised Angus: they had already appraised the house. Angus saw himself dismissed as an obscure painter of no consequence, living in a wilderness with heaps of cow shit almost on his doorstep.

  He noticed then the resemblance between Gomez and Letty.

  The lawyer’s eyes were blank. His business was with documents. ‘You will know, Mr McAllister, that we have come to discuss certain matters with Miss Diaz. Is she in the house?’

  Angus knew that Fidelia’s maiden name was Diaz. Why was this fellow referring to her by it? Was it some Filipino trick?

  ‘Mrs Gomez is in the house,’ he said, ‘and her daughter.’

  Both Gomez and the lawyer looked relieved. They must have feared that Fidelia and Letty had been smuggled away.

  ‘Our business is with them,’ said the lawyer, ‘but we do not object if you are present. We agree that you are to a certain extent involved.’

  Do you really? cried Angus, inwardly. Well, let me tell you, I do not consider myself involved in any way.

  That was cowardly. Being brave would have had him scaring off these vultures. But bravery not infrequently was rash. Fidelia did not want them to be scared off. In her present self-sacrificial and penitential mood she had wanted them to come and, figuratively speaking, peck out her eyes and tear her living flesh to pieces. If that was what she and her God had decided between them, what right had he to interfere?

  ‘Please go in, gentlemen,’ he said.

  When Gomez saw the Balinese mask, he pretended to be amused but he was really terrified. It was how the fiends of hell were portrayed in Fidelia’s book.

  Fidelia and Letty were seated together on the green divan. Fidelia looked up at Gomez with a curious remote expression. He ignored her but smiled at Letty.

  ‘Please sit down,’ said Angus.

  Gomez sat on the yellow divan, with his hat on his knees. The lawyer murmured that, if Mr McAllister did not mind, he would stand.

  Angus himself sat on the red divan.

  The lawyer stood close to Buddha. He had taken some documents out of his briefcase.

  Letty couldn’t keep her eyes off her father. She seemed to be fascinated by his display of wealth: the expensive clothes, the three gold rings, and the gold tiepin with the diamond sparkling in it.

  ‘I have here,’ said the lawyer, ‘copies of warrants issued by courts in the Philippines and Malaysia awarding custody of the child Letitia Gomez to her father Señor Enrique Gomez of Forbes Park, Manila.’ He offered to show them to Angus, but not to Fidelia.

  Angus declined. ‘Are they enforceable in Scotland?’ he asked, neutrally.

  ‘Ultimately, yes, Mr McAllister. No country will give countenance to a lawbreaker. By disregarding these warrants and abducting the child, Miss Diaz has broken the laws of two countries, as she well knows. She has acted contrary to the advice of her lawyer, Mr Patel.’

  Inwardly Angus retorted: ‘No fair-minded person in this or any other country would consider Miss Diaz, as you call her, a lawbreaker. For ten years she has looked after her child while Mr Gomez showed no interest. Morally, therefore, if not legally, he has forfeited any right he may have had to the child.’

  Outwardly he said nothing. He was leaving it to Fidelia. Unlike him she was running a great risk in not speaking up. Was it possible that she had let Letty coax or bully her into surrender, in return perhaps for monetary compensation?

  The lawyer was holding up another document. ‘Some time ago, in Manila, a decree of annulment of marriage was granted to Señor Gomez by the appropriate authorities.’

  By his friends the bishops! Angus could not keep indignation out of his voice. ‘How could she be divorced without her knowledge?’

  ‘It has been done. May I point out that there is now no impediment to your marriage with Miss Diaz, which we understand has been your wish for some time.’

  Angus ought not to have shaken his head or looked dismayed, but he did. He saw Fidelia gazing at him and tried to smile.

  ‘This being so,’ said the lawyer, ‘it is in the child’s best interests that she be taken into the care of her natural and legal father.’

  This time Angus nodded, without meaning to, without knowing what it was supposed to convey.

  Fidelia then, up to that moment passive and meek as a nun in prayer, giving the impression that she was prepared to bear without complaint whatever cross God laid upon her, suddenly sprang to her feet, with a bound reached the blowpipe-spear, tore it down off the wall, gripped it fiercely in both hands, with the spear part foremost, and rushed to plunge it into Gomez’s breast as Angus thought and Gomez too, judging by his look of terror, but no, to Angus’s incredulity and shock, it was into Angus’s own breast that the sharp iron point was plunged with force enough to embed it deeply, with blood bursting out and covering his white shirt in an instant. Thus had headhunters finished off the wild pigs which their poisoned darts had first paralysed. He could not think clearly: the pain was too great. He heard screaming: it was little Letty’s. Did it have in it a trace of jubilation? He should not have forgotten to put out bread for the demons. Fidelia was staring down at him, her face contorted with horror: no wonder, considering what a hideous mistake she had made. But why wasn’t she wiping the blood from his mouth? He heard a car stopping outside. It must be Janet, come too late. The funny thing was he felt animosity towards no one.