‘Yeah. It’s interesting.’ Jake West had a foxy look. Unshaven, as they all were, purposefully stubbled as well as tanned and shaggy-headed. As he wasn’t part of the main team, only Monkey Start’s partner in whatever the other thing was, he hadn’t been around as long as the others had, and Andy didn’t know him as well. He did know he came from Nottingham and wasn’t married, and that he was twenty-four, the youngest man in this circle of what could easily by the look of them have been Chilean peóns. He told them, ‘Grandfather pegged out suddenly, food-poisoning or some such, in nineteen-thirty. My father was twenty then — name was Bruce — and he took over the running of the place. His mother, old Granny Fiona, was a very domineering woman and she was the driving force behind him, most of his life – long as he had any driving force. In fact he didn’t lose it, she transferred it.’
Geoff Hosegood asked, ‘Who to?’
‘Well — my father didn’t marry until he was in his middle thirties. In nineteen-forty-five actually, year the war ended in Europe. My mother was then eighteen. She was half Welsh and half Italian. Small, very feminine — what in Scotland they call a “wee smasher”… Granny Fiona was against the marriage. She was a great horse of a woman herself, and she was contemptuous — I dare say jealous — of my mother for being pretty and petite. Also for being what she called a mongrel. The old bag told my father, “Och, she’ll nae gi’e y bairns – an’ they’d be weeds if she did!”’
He’d slipped naturally into his grandmother’s Scottish accent, vividly remembering the tough old woman who’d treated his mother like a servant girl, called her ‘Joannie’ instead of by her real name, Juanita, and fought her on every detail of how the house and family should be run.
‘My father should’ve put his foot down, of course. But anyway, the first child came in nineteen-fifty — that’s my brother Robert. Big, ginger-headed like grandfather Robert. Too damn big, my mother nearly died having him. Granny Fiona was wild about him, though, spent all her time trying to take him over, same as she’d taken over everything else. And Robert made it easy for her… Incidentally, I’ve had most of this family history from Tom Strobie, who watched it all happening.’ Andy explained to Jake West, ‘Strobie’s the guy your Lieutenant Start’s been visiting — we hope. Neighbour; land adjoins my family’s. He arrived in Patagonia about the time Robert was born, and he and my father got to be close friends. Very different characters, but they got on. For one thing they both drank a lot; and my father used to get away from his own place whenever he could, avoiding having to face up to the old woman. Rough on my mother, of course… But then when she got pregnant the second time, he took Tom Strobie’s advice and whisked her away to Scotland, to make sure she was properly looked after — because, as I said, having Robert had nearly killed her. My father did love her, there’s no doubt of that, he just didn’t have the strength or the guts to handle his mother, so she browbeat him ninety per cent of the time. On that occasion he defied her — and we were doing well in those days, money wasn’t any problem. That’s how I came to be born in Edinburgh. Everything went fine, and we came home. Granny Fiona had made good use of her time alone with Robert — had him eating out of her hand, Strobie told me. And she used to sneer at me, called me “Joannie’s runt”. I happened to be smaller than my damn brother, that’s all. But having brown hair instead of the MacEwan ginger didn’t appeal to her either. Mongrel blood, you see.’
He nodded to Tony Beale. ‘There you are. One bed-time story.’
Cloudsley said, fingering the stubble on his short, cleft chin, ‘But you went to school in Scotland, too. How did that come about?’
‘Another idea of Strobie’s. I owe that old guy a lot, you see. They were having Robert schooled near BA, and Tom suggested to my father that it might be a good idea to give one of his sons an education back where we’d all come from. Who knows, he said, the boy might not want to spend all his life out here, specially as it doesn’t look as if he and Robert are likely to find much in common. Which was smart, considering Robert was still a kid and I was a toddler. Anyway, my father must have trusted old Tom’s judgement, and as he was doing very well financially — despite his drinking habit — that’s what did happen. Granny Fiona didn’t care much; she was glad to have me out of the way while she went on grooming Robert to take over. Shoving him along, really brainwashing him into becoming her idea of what a MacEwan ought to be — you might say, a fourteen-carat shit.’
‘Happy families.’ Beale’s tone was ironic. From the expression on his strong-featured, bony face you’d guess he’d been there. Cloudsley was using a very small pair of binoculars, studying the lake shore below them. Andy told them, ‘After my mother died — in BA, in the British hospital, having a still-born daughter — there was no stopping the old woman. I was four, then, so I don’t remember much, not even much about my mother, except not being able to believe it when they told me she wasn’t coming home. I do remember that… But most of what I know of those days is what Torn Strobie’s told me at various times. My mother’s death just about finished my father, and the booze problem went from bad to worse. By the time I was away to school in Scotland I knew my father was a soak, my grandmother a tyrant and my brother had all the makings of a — I don’t know, a storm-trooper. Just as the old bitch wanted him. But in one way he ran foul of her. She had this contempt for anyone who wasn’t British and preferably Scottish, but her beloved Robert was steadily becoming more Argentine than Anglo. I dare say his school up at BA was an influence, or his school chums. They were pretty well all what my grandmother used to refer to as “dagoes”. They used to have real battles about it.’
What Andy was not about to tell anyone was that when he came home in 1973 for a long pre-university break, he and Francisca Diaz fell in love. She’d spent her childhood in BA and around naval airbases where her father had been stationed, but at this time she was living at the family’s Patagonian estancia, Santa Maria. This was because Alejandro Diaz had resigned his commission in order to take up a political appointment, and there was some delay — a backwash, Strobie thought, from General Lanusse having not that long ago taken over as President from the equally useless General Levingston. But an influence in his making this change was his wife having left him, the year before. Elaine Diaz, who was American and a beauty, prominent in BA society, had skipped with a polo-playing Bostonian millionaire, run off back to the States with him and then got herself a divorce in Reno. Francisca hated her mother for this, sided completely with her father. She was seventeen that year, Andy eighteen; she was taller than him by an inch or so, very pretty, pale blue eyes, black hair, a long throat and a vital, athletic body. They rode together, played tennis, hunted, danced. She’d dance shoeless to make up for the difference in height, of which he was over-conscious. And they got to be lovers that summer. Tony Beale yawned. He murmured, ‘Our raconteur has dried up.’
He came back to earth. Or rather, rock, and full daylight now. He told them, ‘My father died in nineteen-seventy-five. The old woman had already gone by then, she kicked the bucket during my last year at school. I didn’t come home for that. But my father had been missing for two days, in mid-winter — deep snow, and blizzards. If you’re lucky you won’t see it, we won’t be here long enough, but in a hard winter like that one Patagonia’s a wilderness — hundreds of miles of bugger-all except snow and wind, wind never letting up for a minute. Robert had been out with the peóns, searching for him, but they gave up and went back home. Strobie heard that he’d said to the mayordomo — the manager — “He’ll be holed-up some place, stoned. He’ll show up when it settles. Maybe…” And he did show up — his horse brought him home, semi-conscious, out of his mind. He died — hypothermia, the doctor said — within twelve hours, and I got a cable, flew home for the funeral.’
Most neighbours braved the weather for it. Including the Diaz family, father and daughter. Andy’s sorrow at his father’s death had been mitigated by the prospect of reunion with Francisca, but she was no mo
re than friendly, and much less cool — he’d thought he was imagining this at first — with Robert, who was calling himself ‘Roberto’ and talking to Diaz about buying a small airplane and getting himself taught to fly it — which in practical terms was a good idea, seeing that it could take a week on horseback to get round outlying paddocks, inspecting the stock and checking that the puesteros were doing their jobs. The MacEwan estancia, La Madrugada, contained more than 250 square miles of paddocks. Diaz was of course an airman, although by this time retired, in the government’s political service, with his own organisation in BA and growing influence everywhere else, and as an ex-flyer himself he was all for Robert’s plan. He was in favour of ‘Roberto’ from other points of view as well, including the fact that he and Francisca were spending more and more time together. His approval would have had some influence on her, too; since her mother had deserted him she’d been her father’s determinedly loyal daughter.
The day before he left finally for England, Andy asked her, ‘Remember the vizcacha game?‘
A vizcacha being a small, furry animal, an Argentine marmot, and the ‘game’ one that the local Indians had indulged in, years earlier. Robert would have heard accounts of it in the peóns’ reminiscences. They were all Criollos now, mixed blood, mainly lndian and Chilean. There probably wasn’t a full-blooded Tehuelche in the whole of Patagonia by this time, while down south the Yaghans were certainly extinct; but the stories and traditions lived on, and they’d told Robert — probably in the hope they’d see him wince, so they could laugh at him — about the sport their forefathers had had with the inoffensive little vizcachas. The trick was to catch one and skin it alive: an acquired skill, to get the pelt off in one piece and leave the animal otherwise undamaged and mobile; then to release it among the thorn-scrub, to be slashed and impaled as it dashed around, frantic with pain and terror. They’d have rocked with laughter, describing it, as their fathers had laughed to see it; and Robert had decided to try his own hand at it, then to invite Andy and Francisca — who to him at this stage were just a pair of children — to come and watch. He’d had the vizcacha already skinned, in a sack, had only to shake it out and give it a shove with his boot to start it running. Francisca had screamed a protest; then mounted, ridden her horse straight at him, screaming — well, wild, hysterical — but Andy had snatched the rifle from his saddle and put a snap shot through the dying vizcacha’s head. Robert had been busy dodging Francisca’s charge, laughing at her tears and fury; then he was derisive of Andy, angry with him for having spoilt the fun.
Francisca had answered his question — typically, taking it head-on, with no attempt to avoid the implications.
‘Certainly I remember. But that was then. Little boys pull wings off flies, don’t they? He’s not like that now, he’s — look, he’s grown up, like I have too. He’s a grown man, right? You’re still studying, Andy — you’re a student, you’re still a boy… I can see how you feel, I really can — and I’m sorry — but this is how it is, that’s all!’
West asked him, ‘Did your brother get the farm? When your father snuffed it? Why you settled in the UK, an’ all?’
‘No, we inherited equally. That’s how the law goes, in the Argentine. But he and I never got along. We could have split it, taken half each, but there’d have been a lot of complications and you can’t make a small farm pay, it wouldn’t have worked at all. So I still own half — half the profits, when or if there are any — but he runs it and lives off it, and I work for a firm in London.’
Beale commented, ‘Brother Robert’s the farmer, you’re the city slicker.’
‘He’s the farmer, but he’s also a flyer now.’
‘So I heard.’ Beale nodded towards Cloudsley. ‘In the Sea King.’
It would be why he’d wanted to hear the rest of it, the family background. Andy explained. ‘He had a light aircraft, a Beagle, for getting out to the paddocks. It’s a lot of ground to cover, you know, about thirty square leagues.’
‘A square league being how much?’
‘A league’s five kilometres, so a square league’s about three miles by three, nine square miles. But the flying thing — a neighbour is this man Diaz. He’s a high-up now, a prominent Junta supporter, but he was a commander in their fleet air arm before he went political, and I’d guess he personally taught my brother to fly and then encouraged him to join the naval reserve.’
‘Your brother could be flying against our ships, then?’
‘Yes. He could.’ Cloudsley was pulling the poncho close around his large frame; he’d said something to West, who was moving, going higher up the ridge to take the first watch as lookout. Andy told Beale, ‘He’s what they call acriollado. Means he’s become one of them. It’s complimentary or derogatory depending on who says it. If Alejandro Diaz says it, it’s an expression of approval, but if you did you’d be saying the guy’s gone native.’
*
Letting sleep come: inviting it, while memory crowded in and held it at bay. The others’ fault, for having set the old reels running. He knew it would be as well to get some sleep, because there mightn’t be much chance of it tonight on the water, with five of them plus all the gear packed into the inflatable’s twelve-foot length.
Still recalling the vizcacha episode; and the most impressive recollection was of Francisca’s immediate quick and violent reaction. Initial shock, then the blaze of anger: the way she’d flung herself on to her horse and charged at Robert, spurring the horse into a gallop, clearly intending to run him down — no holds barred, no thought of consequences.
The key to Francisca? That shock in her face; most young girls would have turned away, covered their faces, wept. She must have felt the same impulses, he guessed — he’d seen them there, fast as a camera-flash, the stricken look, horror; then she’s snapped out of it and acted.
As she had with Robert? Accepting her father’s guidance — because it was her inclination to obey him, support him, make up for what her mother had not been to him; this reinforcing her admiration — one might assume — of ‘Roberto’s’ own forcefulness, a quality of ruthlessness (which her father certainly had in abundance) matching her own?
In her case, Andy thought, ‘decisiveness’ might be a better word for it. Having decided what she wanted, or how she was going to achieve whatever aim she had in mind, that was the way she moved.
They’d arranged a secret rendezvous, in the summer of 1973/4, at the old Sandrini place, which was on a point of Tom Strobie’s land but between Diaz and MacEwan territory. He’d ridden over from La Madrugada, and she’d come southwest, a much longer ride, from her father’s estancia Santa María. The clandestine meeting in the wilds of nowhere, as far as he remembered his own feelings about it at the time, was a basically innocent conspiracy born of the strong attraction they had for each other, the fact they revelled in each other’s company and preferred not to have anyone else around, but at the same time it wouldn’t have been so far removed from much younger kids meeting in the branches of an apple tree or in a seashore cave — a place to themselves, away from adult interference. The attraction between them was sexual, obviously, and compulsively exciting, but at no time had he consciously acknowledged to himself that sex was the purpose of the rendezvous.
There’d have been little shelter in the Sandrini place in winter. (He’d suggested to the SBS that they might use it, but that was something else entirely.) It was a ruin, none of it snow-proof or wind-proof, and even in summer the wind never stopped blowing; but the peóns’ quarters — a bunkhouse with a cooking and eating area added — had survived better than the house, at least the stone walls were intact. Strobie could have fixed this part up, easily enough, if he’d wanted to, but its only use would have been as a puestero’s shack and he had no need of one right out at this remote corner.
Sheep had spent time in here, and they’d used the main house as well. Francisca scraped the floor with a pane of window-glass, while Andy built a fire. She’d brought chorizos, and gall
etas — small rolls of hard, unleavened bread, and his own contribution had been wine. He’d built the fire with scraps of wood and poplar branches from the withered trees which had been planted to screen this place but were either dead or dying; he’d got it started with the aid of a sprinkling of lighter-fuel, and it was taking hold at last. For ten minutes he’d been crouching at it, blowing a smoulder into flame.
‘Andy, this is no time to bust a gut, you know.’
He’d finished the job.
‘We’re away now.’ Getting to his feet; winded from acting as a bellows. Francisca, who’d been waiting close behind him, began to unbutton her shirt; she put her arms back for him to slide it off her shoulders. Wordless: as if this was what they’d come here for, both known it when they’d planned the rendezvous. His mouth on hers — wide mouth, drawing him in, his a little higher than hers because he still had his boots on and she’d kicked hers off. He felt her hands working at his belt buckle; turning her wet lips from his then, leaning back to give her hands room and for her bra to fall away; then his hands. He’d murmured something about her breasts and she asked, ‘Just noticed, did you?’ Wrenching his breeches open, starting on his shirt as he crouched to undress her: snakeskin belt, jodhpurs, uncovering her small, sleek waist, belly silky under his palms, nipples risen to his tongue; she’d asked him later, ‘Would you have started if I hadn’t?’
He would have, of course. He’d dreamed of her that way — night dreams and daydreams — and the excitement had been almost intolerable, he remembered, anticipating the rendezvous. He’d have made some kind of move, he’d have tried… But without confidence in how she’d react. He’d have been cautious and therefore awkward, half expecting a rebuff and therefore easily rebuffed — might well have bungled it. Partly because she was so exquisite; he’d had the feeling he’d be reaching for the moon, for something like the ultimate even before he’d started living. Whereas she had known, had been absolutely sure — and had taken the initiative because she’d known there was a chance he might not.
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