Days of Your Fathers

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘I understand from Don Jaime that you suggest I should allow a party of revolutionaries to chase me down the Travesía.’

  ‘I know absolutely nothing about it,’ Gil protested excitably.

  ‘Let me put your conscience at rest! I see no sacrilege in so good a cause, especially since this regrettable scene will be organised by the Cofradía of San Bartolomeo. All that will be asked of you personally is to keep your uncle informed – without in any way compromising him of course – so that in case of need he may, as the saying is, hold the ring.’

  ‘He’ll shove me up before a military court if he thinks I’m responsible!’

  ‘Surely not! Surely not! He will rejoice that a grandee of Spain should stick at nothing to undo the results of an accidental breach of faith. And in any case the Little Brothers will see that the Bishop has a word with him. God be with you, my worthy son!’

  Back in the calm of the far too empty ancestral home, Gil realised that if anything went wrong the sacrifice had been already chosen. The scapegoat would be the irresponsible young man who had sold the headland, who didn’t go to church if he could help it, who approved of impropriety on beaches, who could buy an air passage one jump ahead of the police. There was no way out but ignominious flight. And that wouldn’t do at all. Some time in the future – when a rich wife came along or America doubled its consumption of sherry – Lazalaya would again be his permanent home; and home, if it meant anything, meant the liking and trust of his fellow citizens from top to bottom.

  In the evening the Vehicle rumbled openly up the drive to the house. That at least was a welcome sign.

  ‘I thought we had agreed to keep our distance,’ said Gil cautiously, after he had led the mayor into his study and shut the door.

  ‘That doesn’t matter any longer now that all the decent people know you are doing your best.’

  ‘Well, you can go straight back and tell them that I will not chase Father Miguel down the Travesía de San Bartolomeo.’

  ‘Nothing of that for you! All that’s needed is for you to be with Kuchler in his dining-room which overlooks the street. Have you got a pistol?’

  ‘No and no! And I don’t want one.’

  ‘Well, take this!’ said the mayor, handing over a neat Star automatic.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just to take a few shots at us when we pass Kuchler’s flat.’

  ‘I might easily hit you.’

  ‘What about all the prizes you won for pigeon shooting?’

  ‘One does not use a pistol,’ Gil shouted.

  ‘The principle is the same.’

  ‘Kuchler will get suspicious.’

  ‘On the contrary! He will be convinced. You are an excitable young man of good family defending the Church. It is not necessary to know the difference between east and west at short range.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Gil asked, accepting his fate.

  ‘Yes. It’s fixed for the seventeenth.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No moon. And I can arrange for Alonso Mejias and Enrique Jimenez to be on duty at the bottom of the Travesía.’

  ‘Can’t you find someone more intelligent?’ Gil asked, for the two venerable constables had piously dreamed their way through thirty years of Lazalaya’s civic and ecclesiastical life. ‘They are just a pair of unfortunates.’

  ‘That is because their minds are not set on things of this world, Gil,’ said the mayor rebukingly. ‘They see nothing. They are still incapable of holding up a bicycle with one hand while beckoning on my Vehicle with the other.’

  ‘Suppose Kuchler can’t have me to dinner on the seventeeth?’

  ‘Of course he can! What has he to do except walk round his headland learning filthy language from the builders? Good! And try to look more cheerful in public!’

  By enlisting the aid of Kuchler’s venerable cook who had learned her job in the Villanueva kitchens, Gil managed to force the invitation with complete naturalness. She had only to mention that a dish of sea bream, stuffed with garlic, had been a favourite of the señorito. Kuchler, bored by his usually lonely meals, was on the telephone at once and accepted the date of the seventeenth. A more formal dinner, he said, must come later, and meanwhile this would be a memorable occasion.

  Memorable it certainly was. Gil tried hard to be a satisfactory guest, though feverishly mopping up his sauce, talking too fast and probably drinking too much. The more he looked at the repercussions of this scandal, the more nervous he was. Everyone else was safe. The veterans of the republican army, the former anarchists, communists and plain democrats, were all sitting comfortably in their accustomed Café Ventura under the eyes of the town. The members of the Cofradía of San Bartolomeo were above suspicion. Nobody would ever enquire where they were.

  Gil surreptitiously watched the ancient wall-clock behind Kuchler’s head. It formally struck eleven at ten minutes to the hour. His own watch said it was five past. But the time told by Jaime’s immense pocket watch, mended and improved by himself, was the only time of importance. He wondered how in the Civil War Spaniards ever managed to synchronise an attack. Whose watch? What check on it? And then at last came the flash and the formidable explosion.

  ‘What the devil was that?’ Kuchler exclaimed, rushing to the window.

  Gil nearly answered that it was sugar and weed-killer. He hadn’t believed it could possibly be so effective. But trust Jaime! He probably used it for testing the springs of the Vehicle.

  Father Miguel shot out of the vestry door and down the Travesía, shouting for help. Simultaneously the north end of the church glowed red behind the high wall as a pile of paraffin-soaked rafters from the former nunnery flared and crackled.

  Hot on the heels of Father Miguel raced six men, collars turned up, faces indistinguishable in the darkness. Gil threw open the window, drew his pistol and sprayed the nunnery wall, hoping that one shot at least had gone reasonably close to the figure which he took to be Jaime. The flying shadows were seen for a moment down the street against the glow of light from the plaza, and disappeared.

  ‘The church is burning,’ Kuchler shouted, rushing for the door. ‘We must help.’

  ‘I shouldn’t if I were you. These things happen from time to time. One ignores them.’

  ‘But you fired! A little high, if you permit an old soldier to say so.’

  ‘I think I hit one. We keep the peace ourselves in Lazalaya. The honour of the town demands it.’

  ‘Where are the police?’

  ‘The police know better than to interfere, my dear Carl. I believe Don Jaime told you that … well … they sometimes disappear. May I perhaps have another brandy?’

  The only thing which could appear suspicious to anyone who knew Lazalaya was the speed with which the fire engine arrived. Since Jaime Caruncho ran the Fire Brigade as well as the town, that was not surprising. Near the far end of the Travesía was a small turning to the left which led to the fire station. The conspirators had evidently taken refuge there. Those who were volunteer fire-fighters had then dragged out the engine; those who were not had quietly mixed with the excited crowd coming up from the plaza. Father Miguel’s discreet movements were beyond guessing.

  ‘It is my duty to report what we saw,’ Kuchler insisted.

  ‘Just to the mayor, perhaps. We can trust him to be discreet. Lazalaya does not want to lose the hotel.’

  ‘They are going the right way to do it!’ Kuchler exclaimed indignantly. ‘But of course, as one of yourselves, I know that I must not take these little outbreaks too seriously. Now shall I tell Don Jaime you fired?’

  ‘So long as you don’t tell anyone else. These people, you understand, might visit me and turn out better shots than I am.’

  ‘But suppose, my dear Count, that they think it was I who shot at them?’

  ‘Oh, they wouldn’t mind that! Just a German doing his duty, they would say. They’d know there was no ill feeling behind it.’

  Kuchler next day upon his building site looked char
ged with secrets, but there was nothing in that to draw attention to him since all the citizens of Lazalaya were equally distraught. Their animation was insistent, though expressed in voices more muted than usual. Any person of some education was as ashamed to be ignorant of what had happened as any leader of a large community forced to admit that he hadn’t read the newspapers for a week. Inside information, as a matter of prestige, had to be freely invented.

  Father Miguel, as befitted his cloth, did not tell a single lie. He had heard an explosion, seen flames and run for help. When it was discovered that nothing more than a pile of old rafters had caught fire, he was much relieved. Shots? No, he was quite sure that nobody had shot at him. Perhaps people had heard the crackling of the fire. He was no scientist, but could not all be explained by spontaneous combustion?

  Don Jaime massively recommended calm; and the town police, who had not a clue to the culprits – for their only representatives anywhere near the spot had been Jimenez and Mejias – accepted his ingenious theory that the fire was a distasteful prank of students who considered, it might be, that Lazalaya needed waking up. Alternatively, idle foreigners from the vicious resorts along the coast might be responsible. The fishermen of the cove were persuaded that they had seen mysterious headlights racing up the hill from Lazalaya. The fire, the explosion and the shots, which the whole plaza had heard even if Father Miguel had not, were the only certain facts.

  After a couple of days it was obvious that Kuchler’s intentions were unaffected. He took the generous view that, though there might be occasional excitement in Lazalaya, the hotel was too far from it to be involved. Should tourists, as tourists do, sometimes wish to spend their money in the cafés of the town, he was quite sure that they would only be impressed by the unfailing courtesy of the Spaniard to the foreigner. He had some evidence, he said tactfully to Don Jaime, that Lazalaya could control its own affairs without interference, and undoubtedly, for the sake of the hotel, it would.

  ‘He thinks we have declared our independence like Gibraltar,’ the mayor announced to Gil. ‘We have surpassed ourselves!’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘And who has been bombarding the town with a pistol? I was hit by a flake of plaster from the wall.’

  ‘If you were, you wouldn’t have known it with all those clothes round your head.’

  ‘It was the size of a plate! Look, Gil – what we have to do now is to prove to Kuchler that the authorities take us seriously. The Governor’s secretary is in my office.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘I’m busy. Tomorrow. Next week.’

  ‘He has come to pick you up and drive you to the Palace. You have to go.’

  ‘I warn you – I shall tell Don Baltasar the truth.’

  ‘Nothing better!’ Jaime replied cheerfully. ‘He’s on our side. You said so. Show some spirit, friend! We’re still a long way from the fish market.’

  Well, spirit was the only thing to show, plus some of the blackmail which had been applied to himself. Gil found his uncle in a pose of imperial neutrality, framed by the great room of power, and at once took the offensive.

  ‘You look like Pontius Pilate,’ he remarked.

  ‘I would remind you that he had no difficulty in dealing with two thieves.’

  ‘You have heard then that there has been a bomb in Lazalaya?’

  ‘I have had fifteen security reports, each one more improbable than the last, and I begin to fear that our noble police, like those of other countries, create smoke in order to justify their salaries. I have sent for you to tell me what fire, if any, there really was.’

  ‘A little one – in the old nunnery.’

  ‘And you?’ Don Baltasar stormed. ‘You were concerned in this criminal folly?’

  ‘Your Excellency told me to cooperate with my decent fellow citizens.’

  ‘My only hope is that we can put it down to agitation by the Left.’

  ‘No, you can’t. Jaime Caruncho was very careful to see that they all had alibis.’

  ‘Well, what the devil am I going to do if this comes to the ears of the Government?’

  ‘Jaime will tell you what to do.’

  ‘I am not going to have the mayor of a collection of insanitary hovels telling the Civil Governor what he is to do! And I remind you that Our Movement would have no objection to sending a grandee of Spain to gaol with a long sentence, and might even welcome the opportunity. I also remind you …’

  ‘If you’d let me explain,’ Gil interrupted.

  ‘I do not wish to know the details. You can merely tell me this. What interest has the Bishop got in the fishmarket and the mole?’

  ‘I suppose he disapproves of bikinis.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Don Baltasar roared. ‘He’s a modernist. And he knows very well that if the Ministry of Tourism says there will be bikinis, bikinis there will be. Our need for Foreign Exchange …’

  ‘The Little Brothers of St Macario also need a priory.’

  ‘Would you do me the honour to amplify that statement? Concisely and with respect both for my intelligence and my office!’

  Gil put forward Father Miguel’s proposal as confidently as a real estate operator proposing to pyramid mortgages on a dubious title. The Civil Governor listened with growing calm, perceiving that he was not entirely isolated between the Cabinet and his irresponsible home town.

  ‘I always understood the Little Brothers to be an Order of Poverty,’ he said severely.

  ‘Perhaps that is why they have some savings.’

  ‘And I have no intention of holding the ring, as your Father Miguel puts it. You, Jaime Caruncho and the Cofradia of San Bartolomeo will be defenceless before the Ministry. So shall I. I propose to take immediate steps to cover myself and show that I am not a man to be trifled with.’

  ‘I am sure that would be wise, uncle. As a matter of interest, how far do you control the Civil Guard?’

  ‘Control is a strong word. I indicate my wishes to the Commanding Officer and he takes them into account.’

  ‘Then may I suggest that you station a detachment in Lazalaya – just to restore confidence among foreigners?’

  ‘It’s the last thing which would restore confidence!’

  ‘Your Excellency understands me perfectly.’

  ‘It understands that you are an impertinent young crook! It also impresses on you that It cannot lift a finger to save you, since the Chief of State disapproves of nepotism and It has the misfortune to be your uncle.’

  ‘We should only want them a few days. And tell them to behave themselves!’

  ‘The discipline of the Civil Guard is impeccable.’

  ‘I know it is. But they needn’t look quite so grim.’

  ‘What are they supposed to be there for?’

  ‘To show the Ministry that you are not a man to be trifled with, my dear uncle.’

  Two on the church. Two on Don Jaime’s workshop. Four at the entrance to the town. Half a dozen appearing and disappearing around the Town Hall and the plaza. Tourists, if there had been any, would have whispered to each other of the iniquities of a police state, or, alternatively, have wondered from what threat of commotion a benevolent government was protecting them.

  The citizens of Lazalaya were content to shrug their shoulders and speculate on the inanities which the security police must have reported to the Civil Governor. Don Baltazar, they said, ought to have stayed in his district instead of allowing his common sense to be corrupted by thirty years of law-courts and Madrid. Meanwhile the town’s life continued imperturbably. In the Café Moderno the commander of the detachment of invaders occasionally joined Don Jaime and his friends at their accustomed table. In the Café Ventura turnover increased by twenty percent, since there were never less than four plainclothes security police consuming and offering liquor while they listened suspiciously to the old combatants of the Left.

  ‘You’ll drive them into revolt, Jaime,’ Gil said.

  ‘What a
re you talking about? They’re getting more free drinks than they deserve, and have nothing to give away. The only reliable sources in Lazalaya are the Priest and the Mayor. And since they too know nothing, there’s an end of it!’

  ‘There is always Kuchler. If he tells them about the shots, they’ll grill me for a week.’

  ‘Kuchler will not be so disloyal to a friend. Besides, he considers you his agent.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘He has organised an intelligence service. You have to take your hat off to these Germans. The things they think of!’

  ‘Does he pay them?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But you’re not in that class. He’s got a waiter in the Moderno and another in the Ventura, two fishermen and Alonso Mejias and Enrique Jimenez.’

  ‘What on earth can they find to tell Kuchler?’ Gil exclaimed.

  ‘What I pass on to them. They can remember it so long as they see Kuchler within a couple of hours. Double agents – that’s what the cinema calls them! I have talent, and that’s a fact,’ the major added complacently. ‘It’s all in this head. The Cofradia need know nothing more, and Father Miguel only a little. On Wednesday Kuchler’s partner is coming to visit the hotel site with a newspaper man from Hamburg. I shall manage them with the least possible disturbance to the authorities.’

  ‘Jaime, it would break my uncle’s heart if he were sent to Africa. He likes being Civil Governor.’

  ‘May he enjoy it for many years! The Bishop and I have his interests always in mind.’

  ‘I think he’d prefer to look after them himself. Why doesn’t Kuchler put off his friends until Lazalaya looks less like a garrison town on a Saturday night?’

  ‘He said they wouldn’t know the difference, that they would just assume the town was well policed. Good! So they will call on me at the Town Hall at six o’clock. Nothing formal! Just to talk in private about the hotel!’

  ‘Can I help at all?’

  ‘Well, there’s one thing I would ask of you. I have a job I promised to deliver, and I cannot arrive till nearly six. I shall leave the Vehicle in the lane behind the Café Moderno. Would you drive it back to the workshop and join me in my office afterwards? The truth is that the Vehicle is a little old-fashioned, and I would not like this newspaperman to think that the Mayor of Lazalaya cannot afford a Mercedes.’