Days of Your Fathers

by Geoffrey Household

  Gil de Villanueva stopped and got out on the crest of the low range which separated the narrow coastal plain from the endless inland miles of scrub and poor cornland. In his own territory he felt a car to be a confinement of the spirit; he preferred the old-fashioned view from the back of a horse.

  Below him to his right – west, damn it! – was the compact little town, its lack of any brick or concrete suburbs revealing that it had not the least excuse for growth. To his left was the great, green oblong of the Villanueva farm, separated from the prevailing yellows of the countryside by a plastered stone wall – an extravagantly expensive method of fencing which dated from the time when labour cost little. The fertility within the wall reminded him of his father who had created it. And that unpleasantly emphasized what his father would have thought of him.

  A remarkable vehicle was pounding unconcernedly up the hairpin bends of the road. The front of it was a twin-engined motorcycle with its handlebars enclosed in a cabin; the back was that of a small van. It belonged to the mayor, and had indeed been built by him in his own workshop. Since he was the smith, coachbuilder and wheelwright of Lazalaya and described himself as Engineer, it was a striking advertisement for his crafts. Forged iron and sound timber made it indestructible, and on such a hill would probably have made it immoveable if not for an additional gear of three massive cogs and shafts. Even so, the steady climbing was mysterious, for the home-made first gear must have weighed nearly as much as the engine.

  Gil’s first instinct was to turn round and escape the meeting. He was humiliated to think that the mayor might not even stop to talk. But such cowardice would not do, really would not do. So he placed his own car more or less in the middle of the road, and himself posed sadly and romantically upon a roadside rock.

  Don Jaime Caruncho halted his shuddering chimera, and at least exchanged compliments.

  ‘And what are you thinking about up there?’ he asked. ‘Lunch?’

  ‘Far from it, Jaime. I am recovering from an interview with the Civil Governor.’

  ‘What was His Excellency’s opinion?’

  ‘Of me?’

  ‘That I can guess. Of what should be done.’

  ‘Civil Governors, my dear Jaime, only think what they think they ought to think. That is why they are appointed. All I can tell you is that he would rather have fish than a hotel.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Of course. He drew himself up to his full width and ordered me to cooperate with decent people.’

  ‘Then I will try to find a use for you.’

  ‘Anything you like,’ said Gil, joining the mayor in the road and absent-mindedly patting the vehicle. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To buy a second-hand dynamo.’

  ‘Second-hand dynamos don’t work.’

  ‘They do when I have repaired them.’

  ‘If I were to accompany you in the back of the van …’

  ‘No. For the time being we should continue to appear on the worst possible terms.’

  ‘How right you are, Jaime! The strength of you natural leaders is in the instinctive reactions which allow you time to think.’

  ‘Enough compliments! Do you agree with us that this hotel will be a disaster for the morale of Lazalaya?’

  Gil did not. He thought that both the influence and the economic effects of the hotel would be excellent. But what mattered was the site for the long-promised breakwater.

  ‘Jaime, I always accept expert opinion,’ he answered cautiously. ‘This Kuchler, however, is a heretic and will not.’

  ‘He must answer to God for it. Meanwhile you can ask him to dinner.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Nothing! Nothing! Just to look mysterious if he asks your opinion on some curiosities that I have told him. He is very interested in the atrocious past of Lazalaya, and it seems to me that he is too sure of the future. Some of those exaggerations you loose off when you have been drinking would do no harm.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘We will see how it goes. Well, I’m off. On your way back take a look at the house in the Travesía de San Bartolomeo where Kuchler is staying. Something may occur to you.’

  When he reached Lazalaya, Gil walked slowly through the Travesia. Nothing whatever occurred to him, except that Jaime would never take action without the approval of his friends, the priests. He was a conservative of conservatives, an ardent and practising churchman and above suspicion. Reliability without speed. The Vehicle was a true expression of his character – though it might be as well to remember that within his workshop Jaime was ruthless with his materials.

  The Travesía was a long, narrow alley behind the Church, with half-abandoned warehouses on one side and a high wall, which had once enclosed a nunnery, on the other. The only two houses were Father Miguel’s, next to the church, and a venerable, crumbling mansion nearly opposite, of which Herr Kuchler had taken the second floor. The alley was private enough for anything, even for Kuchler’s assassination – though that could hardly have entered into the calculations of Jaime and the cofradía of the Friends of San Bartolomeo who probably represented as well as anyone the ‘decent people’ referred to by his uncle. Feeling more obscured by ecclesiastical shadows than an experienced Villanueva ought to feel, he dropped a note to Kuchler asking him to dinner the following day.

  As yet he had only talked to the speculator at the hotel site or on the beach, reluctant to join him in the Café Moderno and be received by its customers with an elaborate politeness which really hurt. Kuchler, no doubt, would have ascribed it to respect for an ancient family. In his determination not to put a foot wrong in Spain he took social rank too seriously. That was the only reason why Gil had not already offered hospitality; Kuchler would be disappointed that it was so easily come by.

  The German was extremely presentable, arriving with his white dinner jacket and formal air. A well-preserved man in his late forties with china-blue eyes in a smooth face of even tan, he was straight off the cover of a magazine for elder citizens – if there was such a thing. He turned out to be a likeable guest, and would have been even more so if he had not been so anxious to be liked.

  Passion was the only word for Kuchler’s admiration of Spain and its people. Gil was reminded of an unfortunate friend of his who had been determined to marry a gipsy singer and was always making excuses or denying that any need for excuses existed. He suspected that Kuchler knew the country chiefly from books, though speaking excellent Castilian. He was too slow to appreciate the dancing of light and shade.

  ‘I hope, Count, that you are content with our deal?’ Kuchler asked at last.

  ‘Very, my dear fellow, very! When I think of the bare …’

  ‘And I intend to pay particular attention to the restaurant.’

  ‘The little bikinis!’ Gil exclaimed.

  ‘Ha! Ha!’

  ‘And the intriguing possibilities of my house!’

  ‘You will invite me. I hope.’

  ‘Of course! Of course!’ Gil replied, and then remembered that he was under orders.

  The revolutionary past of Lazalaya had not been notably atrocious, except in Jaime’s eyes. Still, over the years there had been quite enough incidents for brandy and imagination to work on.

  ‘If I can,’ he added. ‘It is such a pity that for us the sincerity of political opinions can only be proved by violence.’

  ‘But all is very calm,’ Kuchler insisted. ‘In the north and in the universities I know there are pockets of discontent. But here is old Spain! The true, old, catholic Spain!’

  ‘Yes, we haven’t changed much.’

  ‘So wonderful in our era! So uniquely restful!’

  ‘And always so predictable. Do you know that this house has been burnt down four times since 1800?’

  ‘But by whom?’ Kuchler asked, much shocked.

  ‘Usually Lazalaya. We deserved what was coming to us except the accompanying rape,’ said Gil, warming to his task. �
�And my father used to tell me that from what he remembered of his great-aunts they deserved that, too.’

  ‘But rape!’

  ‘We can always have bikinis prohibited. That won’t keep people away if the food is good enough.’

  ‘Surely Lazalaya does not object to the hotel?’ Kuchler asked. ‘There was, I believe, some project for a mole.’

  ‘Oh, that! They’ve been talking about that since 1930. Your hotel will make more money for them than sardines. And prosperity for everyone is bound to reduce the crime statistics.’

  ‘There is no crime! My partner and I consulted our Embassy and the provincial chief of security.’

  Gil had to admit that there were very few arrests. He tried to make his tone regretful. Herr Kuchler fidgeted with his bow tie and finished his brandy with a decisive gulp.

  ‘I was talking to Don Jaime Caruncho a few days ago,’ he said. ‘He asked me if I had ever visited the cemetery.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘Casually. In passing. And then he put a most curious question: had I ever noticed that no police were buried there?’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘He seemed unwilling to tell me any more, and suggested that I should ask you.’

  ‘Ask me what?’ Gil replied, his mind racing for some answer which would satisfy Jaime and yet be noncommittal.

  ‘Why there are no police in the cemetery.’

  ‘Well, they aren’t buried there.’

  ‘Where are they buried?’

  ‘Who knows, my dear Carl, who knows? I will ask you a question in my turn. Have you ever seen a dead donkey?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t believe I have.’

  ‘Think it over! You are an intelligent man.’

  Kuchler’s thanks were impenetrable. When he got into his car to drive back to Lazalaya, he certainly seemed graver than he should have been after a Villanueva dinner; but Gil doubted if this able and active German was likely to be still impressed at breakfast time in the Travesía de San Bartolomeo. Jaime Caruncho’s dark hints were childish.

  He strolled with a last cigar on the terrace of his house. Faint specks of lanterns showed at sea where the little boats had their lines out for bream. Lazalaya was a soft pattern of light, composed of faint pools rather than bright points. The only intrusion of modernity was the sudden plunge of a newly bought heifer as her nose touched the electric fence which limited the dairy herd’s supper of lucerne.

  Gil’s peace of mind, already insecure between amusement and misgivings, had barely recovered from the start when there was a second plunge from the pomegranate grove below him.

  ‘How did it go?’ asked the mayor.

  ‘Jaime, I wish you would arrive by the front door. And such impatience is undignified.’

  ‘We technicians have no time for dignity.’

  ‘But for a little refreshment, I hope.’

  ‘Here outside the house, if you like.’

  Gil, returning from the dining-room with glasses and a bottle, determined to reimpose his authority. It was futile for Lazalaya, a town of four thousand inhabitants without any noticeable capital among the lot, to oppose a sound project conceived in Hamburg and approved by the Ministry of Tourism.

  ‘Look, old friend! Forgive me if I say that you do not know the world outside Spain! When a speculator such as Kuchler has made so large an investment, he is not easily frightened out of it – if, as I suspect, that’s your intention.’

  ‘We will see. Tell me – what are his politics?’

  ‘He seems to be much like an American. He gives political names to his decency and good will, and has no interest in definition.’

  ‘But it is said he was a Nazi,’ Jaime replied.

  ‘Almost inevitable in a man of his age.’

  ‘Well, it counts. He was brought up to violence.’

  ‘So were you,’ Gil retorted, for the mayor had been a twice-decorated sergeant-major in the crusade against the infidel Republic.

  ‘That is why I understand him. He has a natural distrust of the Left.’

  ‘Jaime, you are not to involve them! They’d go to gaol.’

  ‘What do you think of me?’ the major exclaimed indignantly. ‘Whatever their misguided past, they are now my fellow citizens. I shall ensure that they all have alibis.’

  ‘When? What for?’

  ‘Father Miguel will explain to you. Go and see him tomorrow.’

  Ridiculous, but at least harmless, Gil thought as he rode into Lazalaya the following day. His only touch of aristocratic pride was in his attitude to the Church. Since it was essential to the State, it must always be able to count on Villanueva support. As for parish priests, one entertained them; one had profound respect for their office; but one was not bound to have any for their opinion.

  Father Miguel always reminded him of an obscure traffic signal. His cheek-bones were red, and so was the tip of his pointed nose. They formed a triangle under the black line of his eyebrows. He was cordial enough – and he damned well should be – but the parochial chair was uncomfortable and the interview unsatisfactory. Jaime seemed to have been misinformed, or else Father Miguel’s system of approach bidding was very cautious. He was pretending to see no harm in the hotel.

  ‘I fear it is likely to bring in disturbing modern influence, padre,’ Gil remarked gravely.

  ‘That is nothing new for the church, my son.’

  ‘Well, no. Of course not. Still, I can imagine …’

  ‘Sometimes fact is more healthy than imagination.’

  ‘I was only thinking that if we are to make out a case …’

  ‘The Ministry of Tourism has the full approval of the Church. It is not for me, a humble parish priest, to question national policy.’

  ‘But I understand you would rather have an honest little port and a fish-market! What about St Peter?’

  ‘I cannot feel that he would have objected to a well-run inn.’

  ‘Roman orgies, padre?’

  ‘I am unable to decide how much you hope, my son, and how much you fear. So far as I know, the hotel will be primarily for respectable families from northern Europe.’

  This was getting nowhere. It was hardly worthwhile bringing up the question of female exposure. The old fox was quite capable of pointing out that nothing was more likely to impress on Lazalaya the vanity of the flesh than respectable wives in bikinis.

  ‘I can well see that you wish to undo the results of a moment of carelessness,’ Father Miguel went on. ‘But even if this worthy Kuchler could be persuaded to abandon the project, even if you were able to repay him his money, which – forgive me if I am misinformed – you cannot do, how is the Municipality to raise the capital for a mole and a fishmarket?’

  ‘Well, we could always try the banks or float a company. We should have the foundations. That’s an asset. And since the fishmarket would not be so big as the hotel, we can sell what’s over.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘A canning factory, for example.’

  ‘There is not enough space.’

  ‘Well, a villa then.’

  ‘Would you wish to live on top of a fishmarket?’

  ‘You’re being very difficult, padre.’

  ‘I am perhaps inexperienced, my son. And has it occurred to you that the walls of the service wing are three metres high already? Your company would have all the expense of pulling them down, and I doubt if the Ministry of Tourism would allow it. Our little town is powerless to oppose the Government.’

  ‘I told Jaime that.’

  ‘If only the site were in the centre of a business district!’ Father Miguel rambled on. ‘I hear that a constructor of office buildings has made an offer to the Little Brothers of St Macario for their convent in Tarragona. The price will enable them very materially to extend their good works.’

  ‘Then they had better take it,’ said Gil impatiently.

  He was exasperated. It was typical of these parish priests to take refuge in milk-and-vinegar neutralism and s
tart blathering about Little Brothers.

  ‘They would indeed if they could find a simple priory. The roof they would build with their own hands.’

  ‘I’d suggest some fairly heavy gloves.’

  ‘It would be well within their capacities to complete the service wing. In California, I am told, missions are turned into hotels. I see no reason why here we should not turn a hotel into a mission.’

  ‘And a lot of use that would be to Lazalaya! I mean, no doubt the town would profit spiritually, but …’

  ‘If the Little Brothers had the hotel garden and the wing,’ replied Father Miguel gently, ‘I cannot believe they would object to the excellent investment of building and owning a fishmarket. That leaves us only with the problem of financing the mole. No doubt the Little Brothers would assist, especially if the Provincial Government, under its present enlightened administration, were to give a grant.’

  ‘It’s possible. But something on paper …’ Gil began.

  ‘Indeed something on paper! With a little compass, perhaps, on the map? For example: that if for any unknown cause the building of the hotel is abandoned and the site with existing improvements offered back to you, the Little Brothers would lend you the money, you on your part giving them a lien on the property at cost, and they on their part undertaking to build a fishmarket with all necessary approaches and customary amenities and to lease the same to the Municipality on condition that the Municipality, whom I believe we should call the Party of the Third Part, undertake to build a mole and a quay.’

  For a moment Gil could find no reply, feeling that astonishment at the extreme competence of the Church would be rude and congratulations out of place. Eventually he mumbled that they would have to keep the deal pretty quiet.

  ‘Publicity is always to be deprecated, my son. You may count, I assure you, on the discretion of the legal advisers to the Church. Now, since you appear to agree, let me hear your proposal, always remembering that I cannot run very fast.’

  ‘Padre, I have no proposal whatever!’